It's not brought up frequently, but a "CodeSOD" is a "Code Sample of the Day". Martin brings us this function, entitled StringOfToday. It's in VB.Net, which, as we all know, has date formatting functions built in.

Public Function StringOfToday() As String
	Dim d As New DateTime
	d = Now

	Dim DayString As String
	If d.Day < 10 Then
		DayString = "0" & d.Day.ToString
	Else
		DayString = d.Day.ToString
	End If

	Dim MonthString As String
	If d.Month < 10 Then
		MonthString = "0" & d.Month.ToString
	Else
		MonthString = d.Month.ToString
	End If

	Dim YearString As String = d.Year.ToString
	Return YearString & MonthString & DayString
End Function

There's not much new here, when it comes to formatting dates as strings. Grab the date, and pad it if it's less than 10. Grab the month, and pad it if it's less than 10. Grab the year, which will be 4 digits anytime within the last 2,000 years or so, so we don't need to pad it. Concatenate it all together, and voila: a date string.

Mostly, I just enjoy this because of the name. StringOfToday. It's like I'm in a restaurant. "Excuse me, waiter, what's the string of the day?" "Ah, a piquant 8 digit numeric string, hand concatenated using the finest ampersands, using a bounds checked string type." "Oh, excellent, I'm allergic to null terminators. I'll have that."

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