Date instead of DateTime?

Question

From what I can tell Date and DateTime have the same functionality. Is there a reason why I would want to use one instead of the other?

I've retagged to VB.NET because VB.NET does have a Date type (actually an alias to DateTime which would explain the question). I hope my assumption is correct. — R. Martinho Fernandes, Apr 11 '11 at 18:36
Since its a wash, I'm planning to use DateTime because it makes it more explicit that it contains a time component. — poke, Apr 12 '11 at 01:58

score 65 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 11 '11 at 18:37

65

In VB.NET Date is an alias to System.DateTime, so yes, they're the same thing. You can see all the aliases in this chart on MSDN.

answered Apr 11 '11 at 18:37

1

Semantics but the docs do refer to them as _Visual Basic data types_ – brendan Apr 11 '11 at 18:55
1

and "their supporting common language runtime types". C# says the same thing but includes the word alias. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ya5y69ds.aspx – Chris Haas Apr 11 '11 at 19:31
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So as DateTime is specified in the CLR, this is the better one to use then? – David Wilson Apr 24 '16 at 00:52

score 9 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 11 '11 at 18:36

C# has no Date type, but DateTimes do have a Date property which returns a DateTime with all of the time-related fields cleared out.

Specifically it returns:

A new object with the same date as this instance, and the time value set to 12:00:00 midnight (00:00:00).

VB.NET does have a Date type but it is equivalent to a CLR DateTime

2 Answers2