Converting DayOfWeek enum to a string repesenting the day

Question

I was wondering if there was a way to directly convert the integer DayOfWeek returns into a string representing the day like Monday, Tuesday etc.

Sample code:

MessageBox.Show(Date.Today.DayOfWeek)

This will return 6 (as of today). Is there a way to directly convert this into Saturday, for example? I don't really care what it really converts it into, but I want to do away with my Select Case:

            Select Case Date.Today.DayOfWeek
                Case 1
                    day = "Monday"
                Case 2
                    day = "Tuesday"
                Case 3
                    day = "Wednesday"
                Case 4
                    day = "Thursday"
                Case 5
                    day = "Friday"
                Case 6
                    day = "Saturday"
                Case 7
                    day = "Sunday"
                Case Else
                    day = "Apocalypse: we're all boned."
            End Select

Thanks :)

Answer 1

DateTime.DayOfWeek doesn't return an integer - it returns an enum of type DayOfWeek. I'd expect that to be converted into the name automatically, but maybe this is a VB subtlety; maybe something to do with using Date instead of DateTime? Try this:

MessageBox.Show(DateTime.Today.DayOfWeek.ToString())

This won't be culture-sensitive though - it will always just display the name of enum value, in English. If that's not good for you, use Zyphrax or itowlson's solution.

Answer 2

There's a DateTime format for that: dddd

Dim date1 As Date = #08/29/2008 7:27:15PM#
date1.ToString("dddd", CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-US"))

With the CultureInfo you can get it in a specific language (it's optional)

For more info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx#ddddSpecifier

Answer 3

A simpler way:

Dim day As String = Date.Today.DayOfWeek.ToString()

Answer 4

DateTimeFormatInfo.CurrentInfo.GetDayName.

Answer 5

Date.Today.DayOfWeek.ToString will give you what you're looking for. Nice and easy.