I am trying to solve a problem where i need to find difference of number months between 2 strings

"January 2022"

"July 2022"

Answer=7

I looked all over internet to find answer but could not, mostly answer used datetime library

Is there any other way to solve this problem?

I tried to create a static dictionary like this but could not proceed further

m={
        1: "January",
        2: "February",
        3: "March",
        4: "April",
        5: "May",
        6: "June",
        7: "July",
        8: "August",
        9: "September",
        10: "October",
        11: "November",
        12: "December"
    }

CodePudding user response：

At first I tried to use datetime modules but later if found much simpler way.

1. you reverse the dictionary to convert month to month id
2. convert year to month by mulitplying with 12.

month_ids = dict({
    "January":1,
    "February":2,
    "March":3,
    "April":4,
    "May":5,
    "June":6,
    "July":7,
    "August":8,
    "September":9,
    "October":10,
    "November":11,
    "December":12
    })

def to_months(month_year):
  month_name, year = month_year.strip().split()
  return (int(year) * 12)   month_ids[month_name.strip()]

print(to_months("July 2022") - to_months("January 2022"))

Note: As per above logic, the difference b/w July/January comes as 6 as this code does not include last month into count. As per your need, you can include 1 if need.

CodePudding user response：

Use dateutil:

from dateutil import parser, relativedelta

def delta_months(a, b):
    """ returns negative delta if b > a """
    a = parser.parse(a)
    b = parser.parse(b)
    delta = relativedelta.relativedelta(a, b)
    delta = delta.years * 12   delta.months
    return delta

a = 'January 2022'
b = 'March 2022'
print(delta_months(a, b)) # -2
print(delta_months(b, a)) # 2