Converting Date string to datetime in powershell

Question

I'm having trouble figuring the cleanest way to convert a date from one format to the other.

The dates are formatted "Jul 29th, 2021" and I cant change this in the source as its a system output. When I try to convert to datetime it isn't valid.

if anyone has any idea id appreciate it. An example of one of the things i tried is below

    $date = "Jul 29th, 2021"
    $testConversion = [datetime]$date
    $testConversion

Theo · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-12 11:16:35Z

2

Because you can have strings like th, st, nd or rd in there, always followed by a comma, the best thing to do is to use a regex -replace on these first and next use [datetime]::PareseExact().

To demonstrate:

$dates = 'Jul 29th, 2021', 'Aug 1st, 2021', 'Sep 2nd, 2021', 'Oct 3rd, 2021'

foreach ($date in $dates) {
    [datetime]::ParseExact(($date -replace '((th|st|nd|rd),)?'), 'MMM d yyyy', [cultureinfo]::InvariantCulture)
}

If your culture (locale) is already set to en-US, you can set the third parameter to $null

edited Nov 12, 2021 at 11:16

answered Nov 12, 2021 at 10:49

Theo

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6 Comments

DrJekyll_XYZ Over a year ago

Hi Thanks for the swift response. So to add this into a larger picture. I have a switch comparison in a for each loop doing some fun stuff with html in powershell 7. It pulls it from a table on a site as a string. I then need to convert that to UK format. Using your script to convert to yankee doodle first just to test reports an error. Exception calling "ParseExact" with "3" argument(s): "String 'Apr 6 2021' was not recognized as a valid DateTime." I altered it to the below $date = [datetime]::ParseExact(($td -replace '(th|st|nd|rd),'), 'MMM dd yyyy', [cultureinfo]'en-US')

Theo Over a year ago

@DrJekyll_XYZ Could work, but without seeing that 'whole picture' it is hard to see what you mean here.. The question was on how to turn a formatted date string into a real DateTime object. What you do with that afterwards is of no concern.

DrJekyll_XYZ Over a year ago

Sorry im not used to trying to put things in code blocks on this site so i hit enter by accident

Theo Over a year ago

Apr 6 2021 does not contain ordinal abbreviations as the example in your question had.. Anyway, I have changed the regex for that and added [cultureinfo]::InvariantCulture

DrJekyll_XYZ Over a year ago

You know what pal, that's my bad. when i typed it in i added a d into the format. Changing it to invariant culture worked great. Thank you so much for your help there.

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