Is there a culture-safe way to get ToShortDateString() and ToShortTimeString() with leading zeros?

Question

I know that I could use a format string, but I don\'t want to lose the culture specific representation of the date/time format. E.g.

5/4/2011 | 2:06 PM | ...

Answer 1

You can use the DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo ShortDatePattern and ShortTimePattern to do the translation:

// Change the culture to something different
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("de-AT");
DateTime test_datetime = new DateTime(2008, 10, 2, 3, 22, 12);
string s_date = test_datetime.ToString(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo);

// For specifically the short date and time
string s_date1 = 
   test_datetime.ToString(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.ShortDatePattern);
string s_time1 = 
   test_datetime.ToString(DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.ShortTimePattern);

// Results
// s_date1 == 02.10.2008
// s_time1 == 03:22