RE: [boost] date-generators (was Date-Time)

From: Hurd, Matthew (hurdm_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-04-19 18:14:12

> On Behalf Of Jeff Garland
> Subject: Re: [boost] date-generators (was Date-Time)
> 
> On Mon, 19 Apr 2004 14:22:53 -0400 (EDT), Rob Stewart wrote
> >
> > That does make sense, but so does the "date wrapper" idea.  The
> > latter provides a convenient means to use operator overloading
> > meaningfully while making the behavior of those operators
> > specific to the wrapper type.  I think the date wrapper approach
> > will prove easier to use, but more cumbersome to implement.
> 
> I have no idea what the 'date wrapper approach' is...
> 
> Jeff

Some further quick thoughts from my dark past...

Most places I've been, typically finance related, have had dates, date
expressions, date generators and calendars as concepts.

Date expressions give you the concept of the last day of the month.
They can give you the third Wednesday of the month.  I'm used to just
strings like: 3wed+2b (3rd Wednesday + 2 business days), -1Sun+1b (Last
Sunday + next business day), -1d (last day of the month).  Strikes me
that date expressions would look nice as expression templates.  Extend
this with date generators that can generate such dates for month
patterns (every 3 months, explict months) within the context of a
calendar.

Calendars with holidays and being able to combine them for transactions
is important.  You can then refer to the second business day after the
third Wednesday and such things.  A typical use of a calendar is to have
calendars for business jurisdictions and be able to union them.  The
usual implementation I've used is a bit field of days of the year for
however many years, though a holiday list and look up might make more
sense.  A default "Western" calendar only has Sat,Sun as non-business
days.

Date expressions can get interesting when you're trying to represent
various business rules, e.g. -Sun+2b unless it is less than 3 days
before the end of the month then it is -Sun-1b, which can lead you down
the path of extending the syntax to include comparisons, conditional
representation and the notion of "instance".  E.g (-sun+2b) <= -3d ?
(-sun+2b) : (-sun-1b).  Now that's fun :-)  

Once place I worked had easter, the lunar calendar and the like to do
some further unusual stuff.

Adding something to a date could be a date expression:
        1.	date_add( date(2004,2,29), "+3M : -d")   // 31 May 2004
        2.	date_add( date(2004,2,29), "+1M : -0b")  // 29th Mar if
a business day, previous b day if not one
Hmmm, I forget how that bit used to work, but you get the idea...
Generate a date or dates from some specification, the last day of the
month is a simple specification.

$0.005

Matt Hurd.

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