How to know if a DateTime is between a DateRange in C#

c# .net datetime date-range
Daniel Peñalba picture Daniel Peñalba · Jan 24, 2011 · Viewed 133.6k times · Source

I need to know if a Date is between a DateRange. I have three dates:

// The date range
DateTime startDate;
DateTime endDate;

DateTime dateToCheck;

The easy solution is doing a comparison, but is there a smarter way to do this?

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Jan 24, 2011

Nope, doing a simple comparison looks good to me:

return dateToCheck >= startDate && dateToCheck < endDate;

Things to think about though:

  • DateTime is a somewhat odd type in terms of time zones. It could be UTC, it could be "local", it could be ambiguous. Make sure you're comparing apples with apples, as it were.
  • Consider whether your start and end points should be inclusive or exclusive. I've made the code above treat it as an inclusive lower bound and an exclusive upper bound.

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