C# 4.0 - 3 value pairs (possibly more). Sort based on values

Question

This is a tough one to phrase as a search query and I'm having no luck. And the more I think about it, it is more a logic question than a syntax one. However I am a newby to C# (8 years php) and I am currently building my third windows forms app so there may be a method built to do just what I want.

What I am doing is reading a date format given by the user as a single string and breaking it into parts to be assigned to an Array, or from what I have seen in my searches for Associative Arrays, maybe a SortedList or Dictionary.

e.g.

SortedList<string, int> resultArray = new SortedList<string, int>();
string dateFormat = "yyyyMMdd" // Just and example

int yearPos = dateFormat.IndexOf("yyyy");
int monthPos = dateFormat.IndexOf("MM");
int dayPos = dateFormat.IndexOf("dd");

resultArray.Add("yearPos", yearPos);
resultArray.Add("monthPos", monthPos);
resultArray.Add("dayPos", dayPos);

// So, resultArray expressed as an array looks like:
// resultArray["yearPos"] = 0
// resultArray["monthPos"] = 4
// resultArray["dayPos"] = 6

// Sort List and reassign keys (or values) based on their position value (which is unique)
// ???????

return resultArray;

Ideally, the finished result that I am after for this collection/array is to have the members ranked by the value of their position in the string. Like this:

// resultArray["yearPos"] = 1
// resultArray["monthPos"] = 2
// resultArray["dayPos"] = 3

The reason I am trying to do this, is because the same date format is used to pull out a real date from a file using Regex.Match. And I want to use these new values to know which group element of the match to use for each portion of the date.

Any help getting my head around this would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I tried this and it works:

DateTime dt;
if (DateTime.TryParseExact("20110223", "yyyyMMdd", null, 0, out dt))
    Console.WriteLine(dt);

Answer 2

Just use DateTime.TryParse. You can pass it a formatting string and it will do all the work for you.