InStr() activty in uipath

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1

Hello, I’d need to match two strings that contain two dates. They should be like these: “dd/MM/yyy”. I manage to format in that manner but then when i write dt2.trim = dt3.trim they seem not too match even though they have the same text.
However, One(dt3) is already structured like that whereas the other(dt2) had to be formatted.
What I tried was the following:
assign:
dt2(string) = Datetime.ParseExact( dt1, “yyyy/MM/dd”, System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture).ToString(“dd/MM/yyyy”)

then i compare with what I have written. But seems to fail.
Any help?
thank in advance,
Alessandro

2

Use ParseExact to convert both to actual datetimes and then just compare with =

Converting them to datetime then back to string is what you’re doing. Pointless to convert back to string.

3

Hi @Adell90,
DateTime.ParseExact(“05/01/2020”,“dd/MM/yyyy”, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)=
DateTime.ParseExact(“05/01/2020”,“dd/MM/yyyy”, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture)

4

Could you please explain more? dt.1 (which then become dt2) is in this format “yyyy/MM/dd” so what i thought was to convert it datetime and then to string but with the dd/MM/yyyy format. i Thought was forced to tell the original formatting (yyyy/MM/dd) first and then to what i want to convert it to. So i cut just the last part of the code and use parse also for the other string?

5

Datetimes hold a value (milliseconds since 1970), there is no format. You only format it when you want to see it or use it as a string. When you have “1/22/2023” in a string, the system doesn’t see it as a datetime. It’s not processed as a datetime. It’s just a string of characters.

Convert your strings to datetime, and compare your datetimes - that way you’re comparing the values of the datetime.

6

@Adell90

Lets do one by one.

About common / quasi standards lets be a little bot more clean for the variable name. If wanted then use str Prefix for indicating that it is a string like strDate1, strDate2
about dt (a good prefix for datetime but also often seen for DataTable) setup your own coding standards

So lets begin:

this sounds like you want to to check if tow strings are equal.
grafik
similar as
grafik

same as A-a we are leaving the string compare when it is about date string when:

  • occurence within different formats
  • strict compares as < = > … as we want to compare dates and not fail on lexically compare

it is nothing else different as a string is equal string (A A example) within another datatype

Coming back to the issue

When an implementation fails on the first round, then lets debug it, get paused by breakpoint and inspect the variables.

Understanding the 6 Debugging Panels of UiPath in the easiest way possible! - News / Tutorials - UiPath Community Forum

so in your case we would ask you to give us immediate panel output of the two input source strings (our naming strDate1, strDate2). Maybe only a trim or other small thing is confusing the compare

Also feel free to prototype your ideas directly in your imediate panel.

BTW: we asked a DateTime variable on the life before the Unix Timestamp Birth and got back following feedback:
grafik