[ruby-core:63751] [ruby-trunk - Feature #10040] [Open] `%d` and `%t` shorthands for `Date.new(*args)` and `Time.new(*args)`

Issue #10040 has been reported by Nathan Broadbent.

----------------------------------------
Feature #10040: `%d` and `%t` shorthands for `Date.new(*args)` and `Time.new(*args)`
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/10040

* Author: Nathan Broadbent
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
* Assignee: 
* Category: 
* Target version: 
----------------------------------------
I'm working on a Ruby application where we have to deal with a lot of dates and times, especially in our test suite. We currently have a couple thousand cases of `Date.new(...)`, and I'm finding the syntax to be a little unwieldy.

What do you think about the following shorthand suggestions?

    %d(2014, 7, 15)                 # Equivalent to: Date.new(2014, 7, 15)
    %t(2014, 7, 15, 12, 58, 45)     # Equivalent to: Time.new(2014, 7, 15, 12, 58, 45)
    
I added commas because I think the syntax should also support variables:

    year = 2014
    month = 7
    %d(year, month, 15)             # Equivalent to: Date.new(year, month, 15)

I understand that this will operate a bit differently to `%w` and `%i`, but I think that supporting variable evaluation would be a lot more useful.

An alternative proposal would be to add `[]` methods to `Date` and `Time`, so that we could call:

    Date[2014, 7, 15]
    Time[2014, 7, 15, 12, 58, 43]

This would be still be a little shorter and nicer to use. Please let me know if you would like me to open a feature ticket for `Date.[]` and `Time.[]` methods, instead.

Please let me know your thoughts. Would you find a shorter date/time syntax useful?



-- 
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/