Perhaps you should return only the information that is given, in an iso 8601
compliant format, so for November 2003 you could simply return 2003-11. The
iso standard is probably useful, especially for things like day of month for
an implied year (--MM-DD) etc. Perhaps format::iso could then be used to
create only an incomplete datetime if there isn't enough information to
create a full datetime object.
Cheers,
David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Measham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 5:09 PM
Subject: Strptime issues
> I'm adapting Strptime to return DateTime::Incomplete objects when it
> gets an incomplete datetime. The old behaviour was to return the lowest
> possible value.
>
> eg. 'November 2003' used to return 2003-11-01T00:00:00, but will now
> return 2003-11-xxTxx:xx:xx
>
> I'm currently checking to see if a datetime is possible and only
> returning incomplete if not. Is that a good idea?
>
> If so, maybe a method inside Incomplete would be good:
> if ($dti->can_be_datetime) {
> $dti->become_datetime
> }
> or else an incomplete could automatically convert itself to a DateTime
> once it had enough information?!?!?
>
> I figure an Incomplete can become a DateTime if:
>
> We have a Year, Month and Day, but no time (becomes 00:00:00) -or-
> We have a Year, Month, Day, Hour and Minute -or-
> We have a Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute and Second -or-
> We have a Year, Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Second and Nanosecond
>
> But maybe that's just me.
>
>
> My other option with Strptime are:
>
> 1. Always return an Incomplete object, but I doubt that's what people
> would want/expect.
>
> 2. Always return an Incomplete unless we are given a base, in which case
> the base fills in the blanks. This would mean if you have a full
> datetime specifier in some format you still need to pass a DateTime into
> the strptime object in order to receive a DateTime in return:
>
> $strptime = new DateTime::Format::Strptime( base => DateTime->today,
> pattern=$pattern );
> $strptime->parse_datetime("Nov 3, 2003");
> # Returns DateTime: 2003-11-03T00:00:00
>
> $strptime = new DateTime::Format::Strptime( pattern=$pattern );
> $strptime->parse_datetime("Nov 3, 2003");
> # Returns DateTime::Incomplete: 2003-11-03Txx:xx:xx
>
> 3. Keep the current (shonky) behaviour
>
>
> Cheers!
> Rick
>
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