What characters or encoding is replacing spaces in datetime format?

Question

I am trying different cultures in spanish language and testing some latin and south american cultures.

When using "es-MX" culture the console shows me correctly the date, but when using "es-CO" culture the console shows me some unkown characters.

The following code samples shows the result obtained when executing:

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Mexico Culture
            CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo("es-MX");
            DateTime today = DateTime.Today;

            string dateFormat = today.ToString(culture);
            Console.WriteLine(dateFormat);

            //Result: 02/04/2025 12:00:00 a. m.

            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            //Colombia Culture
            CultureInfo culture = new CultureInfo("es-CO");
            DateTime today = DateTime.Today;

            string dateFormat = today.ToString(culture);
            Console.WriteLine(dateFormat);

            //Result: 2/04/2025 12:00:00?a.?m.

            Console.ReadLine();
        }
    }

Can anybody tell me how to change any configuration to prevent that unknown characters?

Wonder if that is reproducible @mjwills ... dotnetfiddle.net/piNKWm — Cleptus
– Cleptus, Commented Apr 1 at 23:03
@Cleptus It is, but you habe to look at the data and not its lookalike or presentation ;o) — Sir Rufo
– Sir Rufo, Commented Apr 2 at 4:46
@mjwills I have just updated the question following your recommendation, thanks — iEligio
– iEligio, Commented Apr 2 at 17:28
@iEligio You will never know if two strings are equal if you compare their presentation f.i. on the console. Have a look at the real data (byte-array) of the strings with Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes. Same bytes, same string — Sir Rufo
– Sir Rufo, Commented Apr 2 at 19:21

Sargis Tovmasyan · Accepted Answer · 2025-04-02 00:05:26Z

Looks like the issue comes from different Unicode spaces used in certain cultures. Some Spanish-speaking locales (like "es-CO") use a non-breaking space (U+00A0) instead of a regular space (U+0020). Depending on your console, this might show up as weird characters.

Fix:

You can simply replace those non-breaking spaces with normal spaces before displaying the date:

using System;
using System.Globalization;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        DateTime now = DateTime.Now;

        // Using "es-MX" (Mexico)
        string formattedMX = now.ToString("F", new CultureInfo("es-MX"));
        Console.WriteLine("es-MX: " + formattedMX);

        // Using "es-CO" (Colombia)
        string formattedCO = now.ToString("F", new CultureInfo("es-CO"));

        // Replace non-breaking spaces with regular spaces
        formattedCO = formattedCO.Replace("\u00A0", " ");
        Console.WriteLine("es-CO: " + formattedCO);
    }
}

Some consoles (especially the Windows Command Prompt) might not support certain characters properly. You can try forcing UTF-8 encoding before printing:

Console.OutputEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8;

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