Convert.todatetime doesn't work for similar dates, what do I miss over there?

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I have the following piece of source code in a block of a select statement.

C#

DateTime dt_ = DateTime.Parse(ds.Tables[0].Rows[i][ColName].ToString());
string  dateString = dt_.ToShortDateString().ToString();
DateTime date = Convert.ToDateTime(dateString,                                            System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US").DateTimeFormat);

dateString = date.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd");

InvoiceDate_ = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString,
"yyyy-MM-dd", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Everything seams to work fine during runtime, with a date like this:

dt_ = {8/4/2024 12:00:00 πμ}

But with another value like the following:

dt_ = {13/9/2024 12:00:00 πμ}

I am getting error in the statement

DateTime date = Convert.ToDateTime(dateString,                                            System.Globalization.CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US").DateTimeFormat);

that the string isn't recognized as a valid DateTime.
Explanation: "πμ" is written a greek and it means before noon and I see it in all DateTime Values.

I don't understand the reason that works with one and not the other date value. Any help and explanation will be much appreciated.
Thank you so much in advance.

What I have tried:

I tried the following but it doesn't work for none of the date values.

DateTime test;
     if( DateTime.TryParseExact(dateString, "dd/mm/yyyy", CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US").DateTimeFormat, DateTimeStyles.None, out dtTarget))
      {
           test = dtTarget.Date;
      }

Posted 13-Sep-24 5:37am

Aggeliki Asimakopoulou

Updated 13-Sep-24 5:41am

v2

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Richard Deeming · Accepted Answer · 2024-09-13T05:55:00

You are explicitly telling the system to parse the date using US rules.

US dates are formatted as M/d/yyyy. Therefore, you are trying to parse value representing 9th Smarch[^] - the fictional thirteenth month, which doesn't exist.

The previous value "worked", in that it parsed the date. But it didn't give you what you were expecting: it would produce 4th August, not 8th April.

DateTime.TryParseExact didn't work, because the format you've told it to parse doesn't match the format of the input. You've told it to parse dd/mm/yyyy, but the input is formatted as dd/M/yyyy hh:mm:ss "πμ". If you change your code to:

C#

DateTime.TryParseExact(dateString, "dd/M/yyyy hh:mm:ss \"πμ\"", CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("en-US").DateTimeFormat, DateTimeStyles.None, out dtTarget)

it should parse successfully.

However, it would probably be easier to use the correct culture to parse the dates instead:

C#

DateTime.TryParse(dateString, CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("el-GR"), DateTimeStyles.None, out dtTarget)