How to format the HH:mm:ss separators of a TimeSpan in a culture-aware manner?

Question

I\'m working on an app that may be seen in many countries in the world. There are not many countries that show hours, minutes and seconds with something other than : as a s

Answer 1

I'm looking for a simple, single line to output a timeSpan in a culture-Aware manner.

Then I think you're best off using the DateTime class to do the formatting for you:

string display = new DateTime(timespan.Ticks).ToLongTimeString();

Assuming that timespan holds a positive duration between 0 and 24 hours long.

Answer 2

This is more like a comment, but needs some space, so I write it as an answer.

While string formatting of DateTime has been in .NET for a very long time, formatting of TimeSpan was new in .NET 4.0 (Visual Studio 2010).

A culture has a DateTimeFormatInfo object which is used by DateTime and includes info on whether to use colon : or period . or something else between hours, minutes and seconds. Now, TimeSpan does not seem to use this DateTimeFormatInfo object, and there is nothing called "TimeSpanFormatInfo".

Here's an example:

// we start from a non-read-only invariant culture
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("");

// change time separator of DateTime format info of the culture
CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.TimeSeparator = "<-->";

var dt = new DateTime(2013, 7, 8, 13, 14, 15);
Console.WriteLine(dt);  // writes "07/08/2013 13<-->14<-->15"

var ts = new TimeSpan(13, 14, 15);
Console.WriteLine(ts);  // writes "13:14:15"

Answer 3

Looks like a bug, you can report it at connect.microsoft.com. Meanwhile, a workaround is to take advantage of DateTime formatting. Like this:

using System;
using System.Globalization;

class Program {
    static void Main(string[] args) {
        var ci = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("ml-IN");
        System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;
        var ts = new TimeSpan(0, 2, 9);
        var dt = new DateTime(Math.Abs(ts.Ticks));
        Console.WriteLine(dt.ToString("HH:mm:ss"));
        Console.ReadLine();
    }
}

Output:

00.02.09