Equivalent of Math.Min & Math.Max for Dates?

Question

What's the quickest and easiest way to get the Min (or Max) value between two dates? Is there an equivalent to Math.Min (& Math.Max) for dates?

I want to do something like:

 if (Math.Min(Date1, Date2) < MINIMUM_ALLOWED_DATE) {
      //not allowed to do this
 }

Obviously the above Math.Min doesn't work because they're dates.

Answer 1

There's no built in method to do that. You can use the expression:

(date1 > date2 ? date1 : date2)

to find the maximum of the two.

You can write a generic method to calculate Min or Max for any type (provided that Comparer<T>.Default is set appropriately):

public static T Max<T>(T first, T second) {
    if (Comparer<T>.Default.Compare(first, second) > 0)
        return first;
    return second;
}

You can use LINQ too:

new[]{date1, date2, date3}.Max()

Answer 2

There is no overload for DateTime values, but you can get the long value Ticks that is what the values contain, compare them and then create a new DateTime value from the result:

new DateTime(Math.Min(Date1.Ticks, Date2.Ticks))

(Note that the DateTime structure also contains a Kind property, that is not retained in the new value. This is normally not a problem; if you compare DateTime values of different kinds the comparison doesn't make sense anyway.)

Answer 3

Linq.Min() / Linq.Max() approach:

DateTime date1 = new DateTime(2000,1,1);
DateTime date2 = new DateTime(2001,1,1);

DateTime minresult = new[] { date1,date2 }.Min();
DateTime maxresult = new[] { date1,date2 }.Max(); 

Answer 4

How about:

public static T Min<T>(params T[] values)
{
    if (values == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("values");
    var comparer = Comparer<T>.Default;
    switch(values.Length) {
        case 0: throw new ArgumentException();
        case 1: return values[0];
        case 2: return comparer.Compare(values[0],values[1]) < 0
               ? values[0] : values[1];
        default:
            T best = values[0];
            for (int i = 1; i < values.Length; i++)
            {
                if (comparer.Compare(values[i], best) < 0)
                {
                    best = values[i];
                }
            }
            return best;
    }        
}
// overload for the common "2" case...
public static T Min<T>(T x, T y)
{
    return Comparer<T>.Default.Compare(x, y) < 0 ? x : y;
}

Works with any type that supports IComparable<T> or IComparable.

Actually, with LINQ, another alternative is:

var min = new[] {x,y,z}.Min();

Answer 5

If you want to use use Linq.Max() but call it more like Math.Max, you can do something like this very short expression body:

public static DateTime Max(params DateTime[] dates) => dates.Max();
[...]
var lastUpdatedTime = DateMath.Max(feedItemDateTime, assemblyUpdatedDateTime);

Answer 6

For anybody wondering about the performance of some of the answers previously provided, I ran benchmarks on a few of them. I used ternary operators, LINQ, and Math.max to determine the best solution for speed and memory.

Ternary

return a > b ? a : b;

• Average Speed: 0.0198 nanoseconds
• Additional Memory Allocation: none
• Garbage Collection Time: none

Math.max

return new DateTime(Math.Max(a.Ticks, b.Ticks));

• Average Speed: 2.4346 nanoseconds
• Additional Memory Allocation: none
• Garbage Collection Time: none

LINQ

return new[]{a, b}.Max();

• Average Speed: 22.8383 nanoseconds
• Additional Memory Allocation: 72 bytes
• Garbage Collection Time: 0.0057 nanoseconds

Environment

.Net Version: 6.0

C# Version: 10.0

Configuration: Release

References

Benchmarking was done using BenchmarkDotNet 0.13.5

---

TLDR

A ternary operator is the most performant method by far. It performs over 100x faster than the runner-up and allocates no additional memory.

Answer 7

public static class DateTool
{
    public static DateTime Min(DateTime x, DateTime y)
    {
        return (x.ToUniversalTime() < y.ToUniversalTime()) ? x : y;
    }
    public static DateTime Max(DateTime x, DateTime y)
    {
        return (x.ToUniversalTime() > y.ToUniversalTime()) ? x : y;
    }
}

This allows the dates to have different 'kinds' and returns the instance that was passed in (not returning a new DateTime constructed from Ticks or Milliseconds).

[TestMethod()]
    public void MinTest2()
    {
        DateTime x = new DateTime(2001, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, DateTimeKind.Utc);
        DateTime y = new DateTime(2001, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, DateTimeKind.Local);

        //Presumes Local TimeZone adjustment to UTC > 0
        DateTime actual = DateTool.Min(x, y);
        Assert.AreEqual(x, actual);
    }

Note that this test would fail East of Greenwich...

Answer 8

How about a DateTime extension method?

public static DateTime MaxOf(this DateTime instance, DateTime dateTime)
{
    return instance > dateTime ? instance : dateTime;
}

Usage:

var maxDate = date1.MaxOf(date2);

Answer 9

Put these two methods in a Utility class and use them to get Min/Max of any number of DateTimes:

public static DateTime Min(params DateTime[] dates)
{
    if (dates.Length == 1) return dates[0];

    long minTicks = dates[0].Ticks;

    for (int i = 1; i < dates.Length; i++)
    {
        minTicks = Math.Min(minTicks, dates[i].Ticks);
    }

    return new DateTime(minTicks);
}

public static DateTime Max(params DateTime[] dates)
{
    if (dates.Length == 1) return dates[0];

    long maxTicks = dates[0].Ticks;

    for (int i = 1; i < dates.Length; i++)
    {
        maxTicks = Math.Max(maxTicks, dates[i].Ticks);
    }

    return new DateTime(maxTicks);
}

Answer 10

We can convert dates into Number primitive with Date.parse(), then we can use Math.min() and Math.max() for processing and storing. With that primitive we can render in any format we want. It's a 2-3 steps process, but we virtually eliminates the risk of getting funky results.

const unixTimeZero = Date.parse('01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT');
const javaScriptRelease = Date.parse('04 Dec 1995 00:12:00 GMT');
const today = Date.parse(new Date());
const d1 = Date.parse(new Date("2004-02-01"));
const d2 = Date.parse(new Date("2017-01"));
const d3 = Date.parse(new Date("2018"))
const t = [unixTimeZero, d1, d2, d3, today, javaScriptRelease];
const min = Math.min(...t)
const max = Math.max(...t)
console.log(unixTimeZero); // expected output: 0
console.log(javaScriptRelease); // expected output: 818035920000
console.log(today);
console.log(t);
console.log(["unixMin: " + min, "earliestDate: " + new Date(min).toUTCString()]);
console.log(["unixMax: " + max, "latestDate: " + new Date(max).toDateString()]);

Answer 11

// Two different dates
var date1 = new Date(2013, 05, 13); 
var date2 = new Date(2013, 04, 10) ;
// convert both dates in milliseconds and use Math.min function
var minDate = Math.min(date1.valueOf(), date2.valueOf());
// convert minDate to Date
var date = new Date(minDate); 

http://jsfiddle.net/5CR37/