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Subject: Re: [boost] [date_time] quarters as new durations?
From: Stewart, Robert (Robert.Stewart_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-12-22 08:27:22


Jeff Garland wrote:
> Stewart, Robert wrote:
> > Thomas Lemm wrote:
> >> I am happily using the boost date_time library and I plan to
> >> extend it towards including quarters as new (gregorian) date
> >> durations, just the way months are included already
> >> (excluding parsing of quarters)
> >
> > Why excluding parsing? That would imply only partial
> > support relative to other durations, right?
> >
> Well, so quarters turns out to be like months as far as
> durations go -- that is, it's mathematical like days and
> weeks. So the big drawback you face is dealing with the
> associated "fuzzy math". For example, what's the result
> of
>
> date("2008-Feb-28") + quarters(1) = ?
> date("2008-Feb-27") + quarters(1) = ?
>
> Month durations play some games to handle this problem (see
> docs for details) which quarters could adopt. But if you
> adopt the month rules then I don't thing you buy much more
> than simply writing
>
> const months quarters = months(3);

That's an excellent point. I don't think the fuzzy math approach is appropriate for quarters because they have a precise definition: 1/4 of a year. Months are less precise, though 365 / 4 is not a whole number, of course.

There is probably still a need to use some fuzzy math in order to determine the calendar date for quarter boundaries. Quarters are usually associated with a fiscal year and there are different definitions of those, so you probably need to add fiscal year support and make quarters a derived concept.

> There's also an argument against adding quarters as a
> duration. I have an app somewhere in which I have quarter
> defined as a date_period so I could write:
>
> date_period q = quarter(2009, 1);
>
> To me at least this seems like the more likely application.

I agree. I didn't consider the ramifications of duration versus period.

_____
Rob Stewart robert.stewart_at_[hidden]
Software Engineer, Core Software using std::disclaimer;
Susquehanna International Group, LLP http://www.sig.com

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