That's Another Way to Go About It

I generally don't like to showcase other's inelegant code, but this couldn't be more timely given yesterday's Twitter created_at parsing tip. There's always more than one way to do something, I guess.

       private static DateTime ParseDateString(string DateString)
        {
            Regex re = new Regex(@"(?<DayName>[^ ]+) (?<MonthName>[^ ]+) (?<Day>[^ ]{1,2}) ↵
            (?<Hour>[0-9]{1,2}): (?<Minute>[0-9]{1,2}): (?<Second>[0-9]{1,2}) ↵
            (?<TimeZone>[+-][0-9]{4}) (?<Year>[0-9]{4})");
            Match CreatedAt = re.Match(DateString);
            DateTime parsedDate = DateTime.Parse(
                string.Format(
                    "{0} {1} {2} {3}:{4}:{5}",
                    CreatedAt.Groups["MonthName"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Day"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Year"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Hour"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Minute"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Second"].Value));

            return parsedDate;
        }

For me, the lesson here is to know your libraries and always assume that someone else has done it better than you already. It then becomes a quest to find that better solution to the problem.