Re: [Pharo-users] Date text converter/formatter

[Ben Coman]

Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote: Hi Sean, On 03 Sep 2014, at 00:32, Sean P. DeNigris <s...@clipperadams.com> wrote: Sven Van Caekenberghe-2 wrote Maybe you got the example and the input mixed up ? Oh yeah, I did, but even the example in that case is ambiguous, no? (ZTimestampFormat fromString: '02/03/01 (16:05:06)') parse: '10/10/10 (12:01:01)'. How does it decide whether it's American i.e. Feb 3rd, or European i.e. Mar 2nd? No, it is not ambiguous. The positions in the pattern are not used to determine the meaning of the elements, only the values. Okay, but its ambiguous in the sense that, at a glance, without knowing the legend (even though you provided it), at least Sean and myself got confused.  For me part of that confusion is that you said... >        1=year >        2=month >        3=dayInMonth >        4=hour (16 in 24 hour format) >        5=minute >        6=second but the example used 02=month 03=day In either case, its harder to remember which magnitude an arbitrary index number refers, than using the usual mnemonics like this... yy=year mm=month mmm=month name d=day of month dd=zero padded day of month hh=12 hour HH=24 hour etc... and thats just off the top of my head.  I think most people are familiar with this. Alternatively, if you want to use numbers, the following would be more intuitive to anyone glancing at it without needing to know the legend. 99=year 12=month 31=day 24=24 hour 12=12 hour 60=minute ?=second. etc... btw, I missed the first part of the For example, limited to date elements only: (ZTimestampFormat fromString: '02/03/01') format: Date today. => '09/03/14' (ZTimestampFormat fromString: '03/02/01') format: Date today. => '03/09/14' (ZTimestampFormat fromString: 'Feb 3, 2001') format: Date today. => 'Sep 3, 2014' (ZTimestampFormat fromString: '02-FEB-2001') format: Date today. => '09-SEP-2014' (ZTimestampFormat fromString: 'Saturday, Februari 3 ''01') format: Date today. => 'Wednesday, September 3 ''14' The reference date is 20010203 which was a Saturday, the recognised elements for dates are: '2001' yearFourDigits '01' yearTwoDigits '02001' yearFull '02' monthTwoDigits '2' month 'February' monthNameCapitalized 'february' monthNameLowercased 'FEBRUARY' monthNameUppercased 'Feb' monthNameAbbreviatedCapitalized 'feb' monthNameAbbreviatedLowercased 'FEB' monthNameAbbreviatedUppercased '3' day '_3' dayTwoDigitsSpacePadded '03' dayTwoDigits See #formatSpecifications, each of those has parse and format methods, like #format:yearTwoDigitsOn: and #parseYearTwoDigitsFrom: Sven That interesting. With the call of #formatSpecifications from...     ZTimestampFormat class >> initialize         "Initialize this class, to be redone every time #formatSpecifications changes."         Formats := Dictionary newFromPairs: self formatSpecifications.         FormatKeys := Formats keys sorted: [ :x :y | x size >= y size ] it looks like the format specifications could almost be pluggable.  What if /Formats/ was instead an instance variable, such that my project could provide an extention method like this... ZTimestampFormat class >> myFormatSpecifications     ^ #(         'YYYY'         yearFourDigits         'YY'             yearTwoDigits         'MM'            monthTwoDigits         'M'            month         'Month'    monthNameCapitalized         'month'    monthNameLowercased         'MONTH'    monthNameUppercased         'Mth'            monthNameAbbreviatedCapitalized         'mth'            monthNameAbbreviatedLowercased         'MTH'            monthNameAbbreviatedUppercased         'D'            day         '_D'            dayTwoDigitsSpacePadded         'DD'            dayTwoDigits         'h'            hour12         'hh'            hour12TwoDigits         'HH'            hour24TwoDigits         'PM'            daypartUppercased         'pm'            daypartLowercased         'm'            minute         'mm'            minuteTwoDigits         's'            second         'ss'            secondTwoDigits         'Z'            timeZoneZ         '+00:00'    timeZone         'UTC'            timeZoneAbbreviated         'UTCLong'        timeZoneAbbreviatedLong         'Weekday'    weekdayNameCapitalized         'weekday'    weekdayNameLowercased         'WEEKDAY'    weekdayNameUppercased         'Wday'            weekdayNameAbbreviatedCapitalized         'wday'            weekdayNameAbbreviatedLowercased         'WDAY'            weekdayNameAbbreviatedUppercased ) so I could go something like... (ZTimestampFormat withSpecification: #myFormatSpecification fromString: 'MM/DD/YY') format: Date today. => '09/03/14' That would be coool! cheers -ben btw, I didn't understand how yearFull in this line...         '02001'        yearFull was different from yearFourDigits.