Parse exact custom time format?

I can't seem to get the custom format right for my TimeSpan.ParseExact():

Time samples to be expected:

1:23:45.6
23:45.6
23:45
1:23:45

The string format I'm using:

string withTenthFormat = @"[%h\:]mm\:ss[\.%f]";

Trying to have hours and fractions of seconds optionally. However using this format and an CultureInfo.InvariantCulture does lead to a FormatException. What am I missing?

Jon Skeet
people
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I'm not aware of the ability to specify optional parts like that in a custom format string. I suggest you use multiple format strings, and use the overload of TimeSpan.ParseExact that takes an array of formats.

string[] formats = { @"h\:mm\:ss\.FFF", @"mm\:ss\.FFF",
                     @"h\:mm\:ss", @"mm\:ss"};
string[] values = { "1:23:45.6", "23:45.6", "23:45", "1:23:45" };

foreach (string value in values)
{
    var parsed = TimeSpan.ParseExact(value, formats,
                                     CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    Console.WriteLine(parsed);
}

(I'm using FFF as the milliseconds specifier to allow you to express "1:23:45.67" as well. If you only ever want hundreds of milliseconds, F or f would be fine.)

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