[issue14048] calendar bug related to September 2-14, 1752

[Mark Dickinson]

Mark Dickinson <dickinsm at gmail.com> added the comment:

This is documented behaviour:  see

http://docs.python.org/library/calendar.html

"""Most of these functions and classes rely on the datetime module which uses an idealized calendar, the current Gregorian calendar indefinitely extended in both directions. This matches the definition of the “proleptic Gregorian” calendar in Dershowitz and Reingold’s book “Calendrical Calculations”, where it’s the base calendar for all computations."""

Also note that things get messy if you try to correct this:  the 1752 correction that you refer to applies mainly to the British calendar, and it would be a little rude to impose that correction on Python users worldwide :-)  For other countries there are various adoption dates for the Gregorian calendar, and various corresponding corrections (e.g., Greece dropping 13 days in 1923).

No idea how GNU/Linux handles this;  what happens when you try 'cal 1923' on a machine with Greek locale settings?

So at best this is a feature request, but as a feature request it would need either significant discussion (the python-ideas list may be a good place for this), or at least an explicit suggestion of exactly how things should be changed.  Closing as invalid for now.

----------
nosy: +mark.dickinson
resolution:  -> invalid
status: open -> closed

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