[Solved] _ParseDateString - Parse a date string for use with the Date.au3 UDF.

[guinness]

I decided to play around with regular expressions to improve my (limited) knowledge and came up with a function to parse a date string into the format of YYYY/MM/DD. Therefore allowing for variations of YYYY.MM.DD or YYYY]MM@DD, since most (not all) of the functions in the Date.au3 UDF accept the format of YYYY/MM/DD.

Therefore my question is can the SRE be improved at all? Thanks.

#include <Date.au3>

Output(@YEAR & @MON & @MDAY)
Output(@YEAR & '-' & @MON & '-' & @MDAY)
Output(@YEAR & '\' & @MON & '-' & @MDAY)
Output(@YEAR & '/' & @MON & '/' & @MDAY)
Output(@YEAR & '/ ' & @MON & '/ ' & @MDAY & '15:12:08')

; Parse a date string to the format of YYYY/MM/DD as certain formats can use '.' or '-' in certain system locales.
Func _ParseDateString($sDateString)
Return StringRegExpReplace(StringStripWS($sDateString, 8), '(\d{4})\V?(\d{2})\V?(\d{2})(\V*)', '$1/$2/$3 $4') ; Can this be improved in anyway?
EndFunc ;==>_ParseDateString

Func Output($sString)
Return ConsoleWrite('[' & $sString & '] >> ' & _ParseDateString($sString) & @CRLF)
EndFunc ;==>Output

Edited July 31, 2012 by guinness

[czardas]

I can't see any way you could improve that, but I think it's a bit annoying that the UDF functions are not always consistant. I haven't taken a close look at the UDF, however in my own date functions I removed all delimiters from the date as the default for internal handling, and set YYYY/MM/DD as the user input default - dual defaults!

Edited July 26, 2012 by czardas

[guinness]

Thanks. I too do the same opting for YYYYMMDD instead of with the delimiter. I'm not keen on the V* towards the end as this was rushed, so I will continue to give it a go.

[BrewManNH]

I used nearly the same RegEx when converting the return from FileGetTime to the format the _Date_XX functions need, the only difference is there are no delimiters between the parts of the date.

[guinness]

Ah OK. I've noticed you've started to become interested in regular expressions.

Improved...

Output(@YEAR & @MON & @MDAY)
Output(@YEAR & '-' & @MON & '-' & @MDAY)
Output(@YEAR & '' & @MON & '-' & @MDAY)
Output(@YEAR & '/' & @MON & '/' & @MDAY & ' ' & @HOUR & '-' & @MIN & '-' & @SEC)
Output(@YEAR & '/   ' & @MON & '/  ' & @MDAY & '         ' & @HOUR & ':' & @MIN & ':' & @SEC)

; Parse a date string to the format of YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM:SS as certain formats can use '.' or '-' in certain system locales.
Func _ParseDateString($sDateString)
    Return StringReplace(StringRegExpReplace(StringStripWS($sDateString, 8), '(d{4})D?(d{2})D?(d{2})(d{0,2})D?(d{0,2})D?(d{0,2})', '1/2/3 4:5:6'), ' ::', '') ; Can this be improved in anyway?
EndFunc   ;==>_ParseDateString

Func Output($sString)
    Return ConsoleWrite('[' & $sString & '] >> ' & _ParseDateString($sString) & @CRLF)
EndFunc   ;==>Output

Also I'm going to sound incredibly stupid (for once), but I had no idea this was possible.

#include <Array.au3>

Local $aArray = StringSplit(@YEAR & '-' & @MON & '-' & @MDAY, '.-')
_ArrayDisplay($aArray)

$aArray = StringSplit(@YEAR & '.' & @MON & '.' & @MDAY, '.-')
_ArrayDisplay($aArray)

[BrewManNH]

Yes, I've finally taken up the gauntlet to try and learn to use it more. Here's what I came up with for converting the return from FileGetTime to the correct format.

$sDate = StringRegExpReplace(FileGetTime($asPathName[$I] & "" & $FileNames, 1, 1), "(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})(d{6})", "$1/$2/$3")

As you can see, it's pretty much the same as yours. Although I was wondering if the last capture group could be done differently than the way I did it to get rid of the time portion of the return string? If I didn't use the last capture group, it wouldn't remove the time from the string. I'm still learning so I will always take different approaches.

[guinness]

Look at this >>

ConsoleWrite(StringRegExpReplace(FileGetTime(@ScriptFullPath, 1, 1), '(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})d{6}', '1/2/3') & @CRLF)
ConsoleWrite(StringRegExpReplace(FileGetTime(@ScriptFullPath, 1, 1), '(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})d+', '1/2/3') & @CRLF)
ConsoleWrite(StringRegExpReplace(FileGetTime(@ScriptFullPath, 1, 1), '(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})d{0,}', '1/2/3') & @CRLF)
ConsoleWrite(StringRegExpReplace(FileGetTime(@ScriptFullPath, 1, 1), '(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})(d{2})(d{2})(d{2})', '1/2/3 4:5:6') & @CRLF)

[BrewManNH]

Nice, interesting choices to make now.

[czardas]

I would adopt the following unwritten rule: once all whate space has been removed, there should only be at most one delimeter. I included the following variations as defined by wiki in

;                 3rd param $iDelim (only supports numeric input)
;                 Value   Meaning   Result
;                 0    No delim  ymd (Leading zeros may only be removed when the month name is given)
;                 1    slash     y/m/d   d/m/y    m/d/y
;                 2    hyphen    y-m-d   d-m-y    m-d-y
;                 3    period    y.m.d   d.m.y    m.d.y
;                 4    space     y m d   d m y    m d y
;                 5    Custom 1  y. m d.   d-m.y    m d, y
;                 6    Custom 2  y. m. d.  d. m y   m. d, y

Won't align properly.

My code is only meant to be used for setting and reading dates in controls automatically. It doesn't really cater for human error input.

Edited July 27, 2012 by czardas

[guinness]

Submitted to the thread.