[GHC] #1007: Add parsing (and some more) to the time package

GHC trac at galois.com
Thu Nov 16 08:49:00 EST 2006


#1007: Add parsing (and some more) to the time package
----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------
    Reporter:  bringert at cs.chalmers.se  |       Owner:         
        Type:  proposal                 |      Status:  new    
    Priority:  normal                   |   Milestone:         
   Component:  libraries (other)        |     Version:         
    Severity:  normal                   |    Keywords:         
  Difficulty:  Unknown                  |    Testcase:         
Architecture:  Unknown                  |          Os:  Unknown
----------------------------------------+-----------------------------------
I propose adding parsing to the time package. I also propose some minor
 other changes and bugfixes. I have implemented the changes that I
 considered
 reasonably clear-cut. The rest I will implement after community input.

 All already implemented changes are available from:
 http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~bringert/darcs/time/

 All objections, comments, etc. are welcome.


 == Executive summary ==
 (see below for more details).

 === Implemented enhancements ===

  * Add time parsing to the time package, including Read instances.

  * Add fromMondayStartWeek and fromSundayStartWeek.

  * Add secondsToDiffTime and picosecondsToDiffTime.

 === Unimplemented enhancements ===

  * Change %S to: the number of whole seconds.

  * Add %q: the number of picoseconds (including trailing zeroes).

  * Add %Q: decimal point and second decimals, without trailing zeros.

  * Add %f: The century part of the week date year.

  * Change %Z to produce the time zone offset if the time zone name is "".

  * Add Eq and Ord instances for ZonedTime?

  * Add Typeable and Data instances for all the time package types.

 === Fixed bugs ===

  * formatTime "%c" did not include the time zone when applied to ZonedTime
 or UTCTime.

  * s/propleptic/proleptic/ in some Haddock comments.

  * formatTime documentation of range of %U and %W was wrong, should
 include 00.

  * The showWeekDate Haddock comment was missing the example.

  * The taiEpoch Haddock comment was missing the epoch time.

 === Unfixed bugs ===

  * Haddock comments for toJulianYearAndDay and isJulianLeapYear talk about
 the Gregorian calendar.


 == Details ==

 === Implemented enhancements ===

  * Add time parsing to the time package.

 Rationale:
 The old System.Time has had a TODO  "* add functions to parse strings to
 `CalendarTime' (some day...)" for a long time. The question about date
 parsing
 comes up once in a while on the mailing lists
 (e.g. http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/16438).

  * Add fromMondayStartWeek and fromSundayStartWeek to
 Data.Time.Calendar.OrdinalDate.

 Rationale:
 I can't find any duals of mondayStartWeek and sundayStartWeek. They
 are useful when implementing parsing for %W and %U.

  * Add secondsToDiffTime and picosecondsToDiffTime.

 Rationale:
 As has come up on haskell-cafe
 (http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/15653), it
 takes a while to figure out how to make DiffTime values.

 secondsToDiffTime is not that important since it is just another name
 for fromInteger, but I suspect that it would be used a lot.  Using
 fromRational to create a DiffTime from a number of picoseconds is a
 bit of a hassle, so having a picosecondsToDiffTime would be useful.



 === Unimplemented enhancements ===

  * formatTime: Change %S to: the number of whole seconds.
  * formatTime: Add %q: the number of picoseconds (including trailing
 zeroes).
  * formatTime: Add %Q: decimal point and second decimals, without trailing
 zeros. If the number of picoseconds is zero, nothing is produced (not even
 the decimal point).

 Rationale:
 Currently %S includes decimals if there are any. This is different
 from strftime, and there is no format specifier for just the integer
 part of the seconds. It would be nice to have such a specifier to
 implement many standard date formats (e.g. RFC 822). Also a specifier
 for second decimals would also help when using %s. Currently there is
 no reasonable way to get more than integer second precision with
 since-epoch timestamps.  Thus the current %S would be equivalent to
 %S%Q under this proposal.


  * Add %f: The century part of the week date year.

 Rationale:
 There is a %g specifier for the last two digits of the week date year, but
 no specifier
 for the century. %C cannot be used, since the normal century and the week
 date
 century can differ:
 {{{
 > formatTime defaultTimeLocale "%Y %G" (fromGregorian 2000 1 1)
 "2000 1999"
 }}}

  * Change %Z to produce the time zone offset if the time zone name is "".

 Rationale:
 Without this, if you format a ZonedTime which contains an unnamed
 timezone,
 %Z produces the empty string. This is invalid in many formats. It would be
 better
 to output the offset when there is no timezone name.


  * Add Eq and Ord instances for ZonedTime?

 Rationale:
 It's useful at least for the QuickCheck properties, but probably also
 elsewhere. There are lots of standard functions that want Eq and Ord.

 Problems:

 Should ZonedTimes be converted to UTC and compared, or should times in
 different timezones never be equal? I would argue for the latter, but
 I suspect that this problem is the reason why it never got included in
 the first place.

 Interestingly, there is a derived instance of Eq for TimeZone, which
 means that timezones with the same offset but different names are
 considered different. Following this logic, I think that ZonedTimes
 with different timezones should also be different. This should be
 noted in the documentation.

  * Add Typeable and Data instances for all the time package types.

 Rationale:
 It's useful and doesn't hurt anyone.


 === Fixed bugs ===

  * formatTime "%c" does not include the time zone even when applied to
 ZonedTime or UTCTime, since "%c" is handled by the FormatTime LocalTime
 instance:

 {{{
 > fmap (formatTime System.Locale.defaultTimeLocale "%c") getZonedTime
 "Sat Nov 11 19:12:45.395568  2006"
 > fmap (formatTime System.Locale.defaultTimeLocale "%c") getCurrentTime
 "Sat Nov 11 18:13:52.010944  2006"
 }}}

  * s/propleptic/proleptic/ in Data/Time/Calendar/JulianYearDay.hs and
 Data/Time/Calendar/OrdinalDate.hs

  * formatTime documentation of range of %U and %W was wrong, should
 include 00.

  * The showWeekDate haddock comment is:  "show in ISO 8601 Week Date
 format as yyyy-Www-dd (e.g."

  * The taiEpoch haddock comment is just "The epoch of TAI, which is"


 === Unfixed bugs ===

  * The haddock comments for toJulianYearAndDay and isJulianLeapYear in
 Data.Time.Calendar.JulianYearDay talk about the proleptic Gregorian
 calendar. This looks like a copy-and-paste problem. What is the calendar
 called? Proleptic Julian?

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/1007>
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