How can I convert a string in the format "YYYYMM" to "MMMYY"?

Question

I want to pass values in YYYYMM format such as "201509" to a function and retrieve the human-friendlier "MMMYY" format, such as "Sep 2015".

I thought this might work:

internal static string GetMMMYYFromYYYYMM(String YYYYMMVal)

{

    string intermediateStr = YYYYMMVal + "01";

    DateTime intermediateDate = Convert.ToDateTime(intermediateStr);

    return intermediateDate.ToString("MMMyy");

}

...but no, it crashes with "String was not recognized as a valid DateTime"

ISTM that the YYYYMMDD format should be grokkable and convertible to a DateTime. What do I need to change?

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Answer 1

You should use DateTime.ParseExact. So your code will look like this:

internal static string GetMMMYYFromYYYYMM(String YYYYMMVal)
{
    DateTime intermediateDate = DateTime.ParseExact(YYYYMMVal, "yyyyMM", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

    return intermediateDate.ToString("MMMyy");
}

How can I convert a string in the format "YYYYMM" to "MMMYY"?

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