Primary Unit

A little while ago I wrote about using TextExpander to write dates, the bulk of which was given over to an Applescript that returned a long date complete with date suffixes.

Since I’ve been writing more and more Python, I thought it would be fun to rewrite it to see the difference between the two.

First, here’s my original Applescript:

 1set theDate to the day of the (current date)
 2set theDay to the weekday of the (current date)
 3set theMonth to the month of the (current date)
 4set theYear to the year of the (current date)
 5
 6set lastChar to (the last character of (theDate as string)) as number
 7
 8if lastChar > 3 or lastChar is 0 or (theDate > 10 and theDate < 21) then
 9  set theDate to (theDate as string) & "th"
10else
11  set theSuffixes to {"st", "nd", "rd"}
12  set theDate to (theDate as string) & (item lastChar of theSuffixes)
13end if
14
15return (theDay & ", " & theMonth & " " & theDate & ", " & theYear) as string

And now the Python:

 1#!/usr/local/bin/python3
 2
 3from datetime import date
 4
 5today = date.today()
 6date_string = today.strftime('%A, %B #, %Y')
 7day = today.day
 8
 9if (3 < day < 21) or (23 < day < 31):
10  day = str(day) + 'th'
11else:
12  suffixes = {1: 'st', 2: 'nd', 3: 'rd'}
13  day = str(day) + suffixes[day % 10]
14
15print(date_string.replace('#', day), end='')

A date object, kind of similar to Applescript’s current date, is constructed on line 5. This is used to build a formatted date on line 6, which is complete bar the day of the month. I swap it out for a # placeholder because both strftime options for the day fall short: %d is padded with a zero, and %e is padded with a space. So instead I pull out the day separately in line 7.

The date-testing logic on line 9 is simpler and more explicit in this version, testing first for any date that takes a -th. Those dates that require a different suffix get dumped to the else clause.

A bit of modulo arithmetic on line 13 reduces the date integer to the units digit, which is used to key into a dictionary holding the suffixes.

The day and its suffix are concatenated, and are inserted into the formatted date on line 15 using the replace string method (god I love Python’s string methods) and printed, with end='' suppressing the standard newline.

Though the line count is the same between the two, the Python version has about half the characters of the Applescript. I think the Applescript’s verbosity — which I don’t help with that conditional — makes it harder to understand at a glance, while the Python is very clear, excepting the strftime format string.

As a side note, I don’t actually use either of these scripts for my long date, having given in to “Weekday month day year” without a suffix or any commas. This can be constructed using TextExpander’s own date macros, which mirror strftime formatting: %A %B %e %Y. Still, a fun exercise.