G'day Marco,
Seems to me that this wheel has already been invented and is called
DateTime::Event::Recurrence. Here's your code:
use Date::Iterator;
my $i1 = Date::Iterator->new(from => [2003,11,1], to => [2003,11,30]) ;
my @dates;
push @dates,$_ while $_ = $i1->next ;
# (2003, 11, 01)
# ...
# (2003, 11, 30)
And here is the DateTime::Event::Recurrence version:
use DateTime;
use DateTime::Event::Recurrence;
my @dates = DateTime::Event::Recurrence->daily->as_list(
start => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 1),
end => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 30),
);
# 2003-11-01
# ...
# 2003-11-30
You also say that the task should allow the user to specify the 'step' or the number
of days
in the delta between each returned value:
my @dates = daily DateTime::Event::Recurrence(
interval => 7,
start => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 1),
)->as_list(
start => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 1),
end => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 30),
);
# 2003-11-01
# 2003-11-08
# 2003-11-15
# 2003-11-22
# 2003-11-29
But what if we take it one step further in another direction and want it to return
weekly values
again, but this time they should just be Sundays, rather than
seven-days-after-the-start:
my @dates = DateTime::Event::Recurrence->weekly(
days => 7, # 7 = Sunday
start => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 1),
)->as_list(
start => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 1),
end => DateTime->new( year => 2003, month => 11, day => 30),
);
# 2003-11-02
# 2003-11-09
# 2003-11-16
# 2003-11-23
# 2003-11-30
While your solution works, there's already a good, easy way to do it. And the existing
way
can do a lot more besides (including iterations of periods other than day-based)
I'm not saying don't release it to CPAN, just that there's ways already on CPAN for
doing
this.
Cheers!
Rick Measham
PS. Note that the above DateTime routines return lists of DateTime objects. These mean
you can do all sort of crazy stuff with them, including formatting them in any way you
please. However to get a list like your routine (if you REALLY need a list) then use
something like:
foreach (@dates) { $_ = [ $_->year, $_->month, $_->day ] }
