Iterating through a range of dates in Python
date, date-range, datetime, iteration, python
Solution
Why are there two nested iterations? For me it produces the same list of data with only one iteration:
for single_date in (start_date + timedelta(n) for n in range(day_count)):
print ...
And no list gets stored, only one generator is iterated over. Also the "if" in the generator seems to be unnecessary.
After all, a linear sequence should only require one iterator, not two.
Update after discussion with John Machin:
Maybe the most elegant solution is using a generator function to completely hide/abstract the iteration over the range of dates:
from datetime import date, timedelta
def daterange(start_date, end_date):
for n in range(int((end_date - start_date).days)):
yield start_date + timedelta(n)
start_date = date(2013, 1, 1)
end_date = date(2015, 6, 2)
for single_date in daterange(start_date, end_date):
print(single_date.strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))
NB: For consistency with the built-in `range()` function this iteration stops before reaching the `end_date`. So for inclusive iteration use the next day, as you would with `range()`.
Problem
I have the following code to do this, but how can I do it better? Right now I think it's better than nested loops, but it starts to get Perl-one-linerish when you have a generator in a list comprehension. ``` day_count = (end_date - start_date).days + 1 for single_date in [d for d in (start_date + timedelta(n) for n in range(day_count)) if d <= end_date]: print strftime("%Y-%m-%d", single_date.timetuple()) ``` Notes - I'm not actually using this to print. That's just for demo purposes. - The `start_date` and `end_date` variables are `datetime.date` objects because I don't need the timestamps. (They're going to be used to generate a report). Sample Output For a start date of `2009-05-30` and an end date of `2009-06-09`: ``` 2009-05-30 2009-05-31 2009-06-01 2009-06-02 2009-06-03 2009-06-04 2009-06-05 2009-06-06 2009-06-07 2009-06-08 2009-06-09 ```