_DateToMonth not working? [solved]

[icu]

Dear AutoIt Community,

Please help. I can't seem to get the _DateToMonth function to retrieve the abbreviated 'three-letter' name of the month.

I've gone over the help file, and checked <Date.au3> and can't see what I'm doing wrong.

The code is as follows:

#Include <Date.au3>
$Hyphen = "-"
$iDay = @MDAY
$iMonth = @MON
$iNext_Month = $iMonth + 1
$sShort_Month_Name_From = _DateToMonth ($iMonth, 1) ; Supposed to retrieve the abbreviated name
$sShort_Month_Name_To = _DateToMonth ($iNext_Month, 1) ; Supposed to retrieve the abbreviated name

MsgBox (0, "Date plus 1 Month", $sShort_Month_Name_From & " " & $sShort_Month_Name_To)

The result is a message box that keeps showing "June" when I want it to show "Jun".

Thanks for any help.

Edited May 31, 2011 by icu

[Melba23]

icu,

Welcome to the AutoIt forum.

showing "June" when I want it to show "Jun".

That is because Date.au3 defines the "shortname" as "June":

Local $aMonthNumber[13] = ["", "January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"]
Local $aMonthNumberAbbrev[13] = ["", "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "June", "July", "Aug", "Sept", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"]

So to get "Jun" you will need to either write your own UDF or amend the current one!

M23

[hannes08]

Hi icu,

you could still go an do a StringRight($sShort_Month_Name_To, 3).

Also I have to say that it is weird that Jun and July have 4 characters.

[smartee]

Hi icu,

you could still go an do a StringRight($sShort_Month_Name_To, 3).

Also I have to say that it is weird that Jun and July have 4 characters.

I'm sure you meant StringLeft($sShort_Month_Name_To, 3)

[AdmiralAlkex]

StringLeft()

Edit: Cartman

Edited May 4, 2011 by AdmiralAlkex

[hannes08]

I'm sure you meant StringLeft($sShort_Month_Name_To, 3)

Uuupsi...

Jep Sreingleft()

[icu]

Thanks to all who replied.

Melba23 your solution works, I basically edited the <Date.au3> file to read:

Local $aMonthNumberAbbrev[13] = ["", "Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"

Hannes123 thanks for the pointer and smartee for the correct code example. If I didn't edit the <Date.au3> file I've worked out the code to be:

#Include <Date.au3>
$iMonth = @MON
$iNext_Month = $iMonth + 1
$sMonth_Long_From = _DateToMonth ($iMonth, 0)
$sMonth_Long_To = _DateToMonth ($iNext_Month, 0)
$sMonth_Short_From = StringLeft($sMonth_Long_From, 3)
$sMonth_Short_To = StringLeft($sMonth_Long_To, 3)

MsgBox (0, "Today's Month plus 1 Month", $sMonth_Short_From & " - " & $sMonth_Short_To)

NB: I know the above code breaks when @MON is for December (because the value of $iNext_Month will be "13" or "12 + 1")... I'm working a solution up using _DateAdd and StringSplit but I needed to learn how to get the three lettered month name into a string variable first.

[smartee]

hi icu,

I know the above code breaks when @MON is for December (because the value of $iNext_Month will be "13" or "12 + 1")...

Simple workaround:

$iNext_Month = Mod($iMonth, 12) + 1

Hope this helps

-smartee

[icu]

Hi smartee, your solution seems clever indeed!

I didn't even know Mod existed and it took me a while to think through its operation lol.

Thanks for the tip.

I ended up writing the follwing:

#Include <Date.au3> ; modified file with three letter months

; Create string for today's date in the format "DD-MMM-YYYY"

$iMonth = @MON
$iDay = @MDAY
$iYear = @YEAR
$sMonth_Short_Name = _DateToMonth ($iMonth, 1)
$vFrom_Date = $iDay & "-" & $sMonth_Short_Name & "-" & $iYear

; Create string for 1 month from today in the format "DD-MMM-YYYY"

$vNew_Date = _DateAdd( 'm', 1, _NowCalcDate())
$sNew_Date_Split = StringSplit ($vNew_Date, "/")
$iNew_Date_Day = $sNew_Date_Split[3]
$iNew_Date_Year = $sNew_Date_Split[1]
$sNew_Date_Month = _DateToMonth ($sNew_Date_Split[2], 1)
$vTo_Date = $iNew_Date_Day & "-" & $sNew_Date_Month & "-" & $iNew_Date_Year

MsgBox (0, "Today's date to next month's", $vFrom_Date & " - " & $vTo_Date)

It works perfect but seems like a bit of effort doesn't it? The problem I had was getting the "DD-MMM-YYYY" format right for a _IEPropertySet with a fussy website.

I'm amazed at how well written and documented AutoIt is--best Help file I've ever come across & 'Learning to Script with AutoIt V3' is the best free intro-to-coding book I've ever found. I first started to teach myself Perl about two years ago to do screen scraping and web automation stuff but I never really did much with it as it got very hard very quickly and I dropped my little coding projects because of it. But thanks to understanding the basics of Perl I've picked up AutoIt quite quickly... and considering how fast the community has helped with my question, and the scope of AutoIt, and the fact that it's free/open source, I'm frankly blown away.

My minor moan is that there isn't a 'Learning to Web Automate with AutoIt V3' book out there unless Google is lying to me or someone here has it on their desktop.

Thanks again everyone!

[smartee]

Hi again icu,

Take a look at this, its a bit more concise and easier to incorporate especially if you need to work with multiple dates in this format (DD-MMM-YYYY),

#include <Date.au3>

Func _shortMonthFmt($date, $addType = "s", $addAmt = 0, $sep = "-")
    Local $dateArray = StringRegExp(_DateAdd($addType, $addAmt, $date), "\d+", 3)
    Return $dateArray[2] & $sep & StringUpper(StringLeft(_DateToMonth($dateArray[1]), 3)) & $sep & $dateArray[0]
EndFunc   ;==>_shortMonthFmt

;Example 1: Adding a month to today's date
$fromDate = _NowCalcDate() ;Today's date
MsgBox(0, "Example 1", _shortMonthFmt($fromDate) & " ==> " & _shortMonthFmt($fromDate, "m", 1))

;Example 2: Adding a day to yesterday's date
$fromDate = _DateAdd("d", -1, _NowCalcDate()) ;Yesterday's date
MsgBox(0, "Example 2", _shortMonthFmt($fromDate) & " ==> " & _shortMonthFmt($fromDate, "d", 1))

Regards

-smartee

[icu]

Hi smartee,

Thanks so much for that bit of code, all the parts of it are really helpful. I'm not yet up with the play with making my own functions yet, or using regular expressions in AutoIt, and I didn't even know you could nestle functions within functions (makes sense now upon reflection)... so it's really helpful of you to point the way.

Cheers!