iPhone SDK Objective-C __DATE__ (compile date) can't be converted to an NSDate

compilation, date, iphone, nsdate, nsdateformatter

Solution

It can return nil if the phone's Region setting is not US (or equivalent).

Try setting the formatter's locale to en_US:

NSString *compileDate = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:__DATE__];
NSDateFormatter *df = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[df setDateFormat:@"MMM d yyyy"];
NSLocale *usLocale = [[NSLocale alloc] initWithLocaleIdentifier:@"en_US"];
[df setLocale:usLocale];
[usLocale release];
NSDate *aDate = [df dateFromString:compileDate];

Problem

``` //NSString *compileDate = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%s", __DATE__]; NSString *compileDate = [NSString stringWithUTF8String:__DATE__]; NSDateFormatter *df = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease]; [df setDateFormat:@"MMM d yyyy"]; //[df setDateFormat:@"MMM dd yyyy"]; NSDate *aDate = [df dateFromString:compileDate]; ``` Ok, I give up. Why would aDate sometimes return as nil? Should it matter if I use the commented-out lines... or their matching replacement lines?

Original source