[Python-Dev] Issue5434: datetime.monthdelta (original) (raw)

Robert Kern robert.kern at gmail.com
Fri Apr 17 09:46:57 CEST 2009

On 2009-04-16 21:55, skip at pobox.com wrote:

Jess> If, on the other hand, one of the committers wants to toss this in Jess> at some point, whether now or 3 versions down the road, the patch Jess> is up at bugs.python.org (and I'm happy to make any suggested Jess> modifications).

Again, I think it needs to bake a bit. I understand the desire and need for doing date arithmetic with months. Python is mature enough though that I don't think you can just "toss this in". It should be available as a module outside of Python so people can beat on it, flush out bugs, make suggestions for enhancements, whatever. I believe you mentioned putting it up on PyPI. I think that's an excellent idea. I've used parts of Gustavo Niemeyer's dateutil package for a couple years and love it. It's widely used. Adding it to dateutil seems like another possibility. That would guarantee an instant user base. From there, if it is found to be useful it could make the leap to be part of the datetime module.

dateutil.relativedelta appears to do everything monthdelta does and more in a general way. Adding monthdelta to dateutil doesn't seem to make much sense.

-- Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth." -- Umberto Eco

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