Iterating through a range of dates in Python
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()
.
This might be more clear:
from datetime import date, timedelta
start_date = date(2019, 1, 1)
end_date = date(2020, 1, 1)
delta = timedelta(days=1)
while start_date <= end_date:
print(start_date.strftime("%Y-%m-%d"))
start_date += delta