There is no such thing as short or long time. To make a step further, I'll say there is no such thing as date vs time. (The type name
DateTime
is confusing, but this is due to tradition.) There is just time; everything else is related to its string representation. You need to work with time, not with its string representation. You should not do any calculations with string representation. You should only use it when you need to show a time string on screen of in text file.
Therefore, a single expression skipping intermediate
DateTime
value like
DateTime.Now.ToLongTimeString
is hardly useful anywhere.
A comprehensive ways of formatting time according to different UI cultures and any thinkable requirements is provided by the set of methods
System.DateTime.ToString
.
See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.aspx[
^],
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az4se3k1.aspx[
^],
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx[
^].
—SA