Time formatting and date suffixes

[Jeffrey E. Forcier]

This seems like a dead simple question, as it's so rudimentary I
can't believe it hasn't been addressed before. I'm using the
time.strftime() function (actually the mxDateTime implementation, but
they're compatible so it shouldn't matter) to spit out fairly basic
date formats, to wit:

January 25th, 2005

The various and sundry date objects in both mxDateTime and Python
proper's time/datetime don't seem to have anything anywhere dealing
with the 'th' suffix on the date. So in other words, I can use
strftime() to get 'January 25, 2005' but don't see anything dealing
with outputting the suffixes like 'th', 'nd' and the like. Googling
around and searching this list's archives aren't turning anything up,
either.

Am I missing something obvious, or is it just really, really frowned
upon to use such a locale-specific function as English date suffixes?

Thanks,
Jeff

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Jeffrey E. Forcier
Junior Developer, Research and Development
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[John Machin]

This seems like a dead simple question, as it's so rudimentary I can't
believe it hasn't been addressed before. I'm using the time.strftime()
function (actually the mxDateTime implementation, but they're
compatible so it shouldn't matter) to spit out fairly basic date
formats, to wit:

January 25th, 2005

The various and sundry date objects in both mxDateTime and Python
proper's time/datetime don't seem to have anything anywhere dealing
with the 'th' suffix on the date. So in other words, I can use
strftime() to get 'January 25, 2005' but don't see anything dealing
with outputting the suffixes like 'th', 'nd' and the like. Googling
around and searching this list's archives aren't turning anything up,
either.

Am I missing something obvious, or is it just really, really frowned
upon to use such a locale-specific function as English date suffixes?

I think the lack of facility is probably due to there being not much
call for that sort of thing -- people doesn't usually go for the "third
day after Michaelmas in the year of our Lord two thousand and five, at
ten o'clock in the forenoon" style these days. If you don't use text,
but stick with the recognisable unambiguous ISO standard format
(2005-01-25), you don't have to worry about locales. However I guess you
have to keep the PHB happy; you can write your own routine in a few lines.

Hint:

if 4 <= day <= 20 or 24 <= day <= 30:
suffix = "th"
else:
suffix = ["st", "nd", "rd"][day % 10 - 1]

HTH,
John

 

[Jeffrey E. Forcier]

See, I was thinking I'd have to write a short function to do it myself,
but I hadn't realized it could be quite *that* short. Thanks! That'll
do quite nicely, and is definitely something I'm going to throw in my
"general utility functions" folder

Regards,
Jeff