[Python-Dev] Issue5434: datetime.monthdelta

[Tennessee Leeuwenburg]

Hi Jess,

I'm sorry if I'm failing to understand the use of this function from not
looking closely at your code. I'm a bit dubious about the usefulness of this
(I'm not sure I understand the use cases), but I'm very open to being
convinced. Datetime semantics are very important in some areas -- I use them
a lot.

I'm not convinced the semantics of monthdelta are obvious.

A month doesn't have a consistent length -- it could be 28, 29, 30 or 31
days.

What happens when you ask for the date in "1 month's" time on the 31st Jan?
What date is a month after the 31st Jan?

Do you have a good spec (er, I mean PEP) for this describing what happens in
the edge cases and what is meant by a monthdelta? The bug notes say it
"deals sensibly" with these issues, but that's really not enough to
understand what the function is likely to do. At the very least, a few
well-chosen examples would help to illustrate the functionality much more
clearly.

Cheers,
-Tennessee


On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 4:18 PM, Jess Austin <jess.austin at gmail.com> wrote:

> hi,
>
> I'm new to python core development, and I've been advised to write to
> python-dev concerning a feature/patch I've placed at
> http://bugs.python.org/issue5434, with Rietveld at
> http://codereview.appspot.com/25079.
>
> This patch adds a "monthdelta" class and a "monthmod" function to the
> datetime module.  The monthdelta class is much like the existing
> timedelta class, except that it represents months offset from a date,
> rather than an exact period offset from a date.  This allows us to
> easily say, e.g. "3 months from now" without worrying about the number
> of days in the intervening months.
>
>    >>> date(2008, 1, 30) + monthdelta(1)
>    datetime.date(2008, 2, 29)
>    >>> date(2008, 1, 30) + monthdelta(2)
>    datetime.date(2008, 3, 30)
>
> The monthmod function, named in (imperfect) analogy to divmod, allows
> us to round-trip by returning the interim between two dates
> represented as a (monthdelta, timedelta) tuple:
>
>    >>> monthmod(date(2008, 1, 14), date(2009, 4, 2))
>    (datetime.monthdelta(14), datetime.timedelta(19))
>
> Invariant: dt + monthmod(dt, dt+td)[0] + monthmod(dt, dt+td)[1] == dt + td
>
> These also work with datetimes!  There are more details in the
> documentation included in the patch.  In addition to the C module
> file, I've updated the datetime CAPI, the documentation, and tests.
>
> I feel this would be a good addition to core python.  In my work, I've
> often ended up writing annoying one-off "add-a-month" or similar
> functions.  I think since months work differently than most other time
> periods, a new object is justified rather than trying to shoe-horn
> something like this into timedelta.  I also think that the round-trip
> functionality provided by monthmod is important to ensure that
> monthdeltas are "first-class" objects.
>
> Please let me know what you think of the idea and/or its execution.
>
> thanks,
> Jess Austin
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-- 
--------------------------------------------------
Tennessee Leeuwenburg
http://myownhat.blogspot.com/
"Don't believe everything you think"
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