Do you mean how to tell the what is "11/12/2011"? is 11 a day or a month? How to restore date format from the formatted string representing date. This is impossible. By obtaining formatted string from
DateTime
structure you loose part of information, that's it.
See:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zdtaw1bw.aspx[
^],
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/az4se3k1.aspx[
^].
This is never needed. Right idea is working with time, not with its string representation, which should be used only on the final stage, for showing it on the UI. By the way, makes sure there is no ambiguity, so the user could always understand what date and time is presented.
—SA