Using Python for date calculations

[Steve Hayes]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 10:20:06 +0000, Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

>On 21/11/2014 08:50, Gary Herron wrote:
>> On 11/21/2014 12:35 AM, Steve Hayes wrote:
>>> I've finally found a use for Python.
>>>
>>> When, in the course of my genealogy research, I look at census or burial
>>> records, I often want to work out a person's date of birth from their
>>> age.
>>> It's a simple matter of mental arithmetic, but I sometimes get it
>>> wrong, and
>>> mislead myself. There are calculators and date calculation programs,
>>> but they
>>> are usually too complicated and try to do too much, so by the time you've
>>> worked out what to do it takes much longer.
>>>
>>> This Python script does it for me.
>>>
>>> year = input("Year: ")
>>> age = input("Age: ")
>>> born = year-age
>>> print 'Year of birth:', born
>>>
>>> It's so simple, so elementary, that it's not really worth writing about,
>>> except for the fact that it illustrates the KISS principle.
>>>
>>> It is sometimes better to have a simple program that does one thing
>>> well than
>>> a complex one that does lots of things, but none of them very
>>> efficiently.
>>>
>>> The average hand calculator can do the same job, but you have to pick
>>> it up
>>> and put it down, and you can't easily see if you've made a typo.
>>>
>>> Having said that, however, yes, I would perhaps like to use Python for
>>> more
>>> complicated date processing routines, namely to convert the kinds of
>>> dates
>>> produced by genealogy programs to a simple yyyy-mm-dd that computer
>>> database
>>> programs can understand, so that "Abt May 1677" would be rendered as
>>> "1677-05-00"
>>>
>>> Has anyone done something like that in Python?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>> The datetime module has lots of capabilities including the several you
>> mention.
>>
>> See  https://docs.python.org/2/library/datetime.html
>>
>> Gary Herron
>>
>
>As we're now firmly heading into the Python 3 era would people please be 
>kind enough to use the Python 3 links.  I know it's only a single 
>character change but it's the principle to me.  TIA.

As I'm using Python 2 and I asked the question, I'm grateful that the answer
was given in my dialect. 


-- 
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://khanya.wordpress.com
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk