Calculating the Years Between Dates

Business applications often find it useful to calculate the number of years between two particular dates, such as the date a customer first ordered and the present date, perhaps to see whether they apply for a “loyalty” discount or a free gift.

Don’t scramble in the code window. Just use my next little snippet. Simply call YearsBetweenDates, passing in a start date and end date. It’ll return an Integer containing the number of full years between the specified dates:

Public Function YearsBetweenDates(ByVal StartDate As DateTime, _
       ByVal EndDate As DateTime) As Integer
       ' Returns the number of years between the passed dates
       If Month(EndDate) < Month(StartDate) Or _
          (Month(EndDate) = Month(StartDate) And _
          (EndDate.Day) < (StartDate.Day)) Then
           Return Year(EndDate) - Year(StartDate) - 1
   Else
           Return Year(EndDate) - Year(StartDate)
   End If
End Function

About the Author

Karl Moore (MCSD, MVP) is an experience author living in Yorkshire, England. He is author of numerous technology books, including the new Ultimate VB .NET and ASP.NET Code Book (ISBN 1-59059-106-2, $49.99), plus regularly features at industry conferences and on BBC radio. Moore also runs his own creative consultancy, White Cliff Computing Ltd. Visit his official Web site at www.karlmoore.com.