.NET (3.5) formats times using dots instead of colons as TimeSeparator for it-IT culture?

Question

According to Wikipedia (and confirmed in an answer by Dario Solera), in Italy they format times using colons:

The 24-hour notation is used in writing with a colon as a separator. Example: 14:05. The minutes are written with two digits; the hour numbers can be written with or without leading zero.

However, running the following code seems to output dots:

using System.Globalization;

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new CultureInfo("it-IT");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new CultureInfo("it-IT");
// Outputs "11.08"
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.ToShortTimeString());

// Outputs "."
Console.WriteLine(new CultureInfo("it-IT").DateTimeFormat.TimeSeparator);

Is this a framework bug? What's the best way to "fix" it? TimeSeparator is settable - should we just overwrite it before assigning to Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture etc.?

Answer 1

This seems to be a .NET 3.5 issue. In .NET 4.0 the code you posted uses a colon as expected. Seems like a strange breaking change between the framework versions, but seems like upgrading to .NET 4 will solve the problem.