How do I format a string into days:minutes:hours:seconds?

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I know that I need to use String.Format but there is very little explanation of its usage in the mono docs. So far I have..

 timeText = String.Format ("{0:00}:{0:00}:{1:00}:{0:00}",displayDays,displayHours, displayMinutes, displaySeconds);

..which does nothing as I have no idea what the 1's and 0's represent. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by robhuhn · Jun 21, 2012 at 12:53 PM

I prefer using TimeSpan (namespace System) in c#. It's short and simple:

 TimeSpan timeSpan = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(time);
 string timeText = string.Format("{0:D2}:{1:D2}:{2:D2}", timeSpan.Hours, timeSpan.Minutes, timeSpan.Seconds);

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Thom Denick · Dec 29, 2012 at 10:31 PM 1

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Just a note, TimeSpan is in the System namespace, so you need to add "using System;" to your header.

Seedersj · Feb 28, 2019 at 09:24 PM -1

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This answer is awful. You do not explain what the heck {0:d2} means. It may be "short and simple" when you understand it, but looking at {0:d2} really makes no sense by itself. Telling people it's easy doesn't actually help them understand.

Hellium Seedersj · Feb 28, 2019 at 11:49 PM 0

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Is it this hard to read the manual?

Answer 2

Answer by Grimmy · Aug 22, 2010 at 10:06 AM

Well I figured out that the first zero is the order of the string array..ie it should read

currentCaseTimeText = String.Format ("{0:00}:{1:00}:{2:00}:{3:00}",displayDays,displayHours, displayMinutes, displaySeconds);

And that gives me 00:00:00:00 with the correct vars assigned to the correctly formatted areas.

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Edy · Aug 22, 2010 at 11:05 AM 1

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Right, the first zero is the order of the variable to show. The 00 means the $$anonymous$$imum number of digits to use for displaying that value. Two zeros tell the parser to display the single-digit values (1, 2, 3...) with a leading 0: 01,02,03. Using 000 would lead to 001, 002, 003.

Also, if your values are float, you can specify the number of decimal digits to use by adding a dot and the desired number of decimals as zeros: {0:00.000} --> 03.234

Cyb3rManiak · Aug 22, 2010 at 11:23 AM 0

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You can also use the String.padLeft() and String.PadRight() methods. strBlah.ToString().PadLeft(2, '0'); Plus, if you want to search for info - you can use $$anonymous$$SDN since the methods in $$anonymous$$ono and in .NET are the same. The implementation might be a bit different, but they are compatible and implement the same specs.

Answer 3

Answer by Guhanesh · Nov 29, 2016 at 02:48 PM

System.DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss");

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Xonatron · Nov 07, 2017 at 11:46 PM 0

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Works! How do you show am/pm?

Xonatron · Nov 07, 2017 at 11:48 PM 0

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Found it. "tt" returns am/pm.

Answer 4

Answer by yoyo · Dec 03, 2010 at 05:58 PM

Here's the bit of code I'm using to display floating point seconds as MM:SS.FF ...

string FormatSeconds(float elapsed)
{
    int d = (int)(elapsed * 100.0f);
    int minutes = d / (60 * 100);
    int seconds = (d % (60 * 100)) / 100;
    int hundredths = d % 100;
    return String.Format("{0:00}:{1:00}.{2:00}", minutes, seconds, hundredths);
}

(EDIT) Recently realized I can simply use System.DateTime, as demonstrated in this javascript fragment:

var date : System.DateTime;
date = new System.DateTime(seconds * System.TimeSpan.TicksPerSecond);

If you want it as a nicely formatted string, use date.ToString(). This can also take a format parameter to control the formatting details, see MSDN docs for more info.

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Answer 5

Answer by yoyo · Dec 03, 2010 at 05:50 PM

If you have a DateTime you can use custom format strings as explained here ... http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Search/en-us?query=custom+datetime+format+strings

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Xonatron · Nov 07, 2017 at 11:49 PM 0

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The first result from this search helped me: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/base-types/custom-date-and-time-format-strings

How do I format a string into days:minutes:hours:seconds?

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