Iterating through a range of dates in Python

Question

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 ge

Answer 1

import datetime

def daterange(start, stop, step=datetime.timedelta(days=1), inclusive=False):
  # inclusive=False to behave like range by default
  if step.days > 0:
    while start < stop:
      yield start
      start = start + step
      # not +=! don't modify object passed in if it's mutable
      # since this function is not restricted to
      # only types from datetime module
  elif step.days < 0:
    while start > stop:
      yield start
      start = start + step
  if inclusive and start == stop:
    yield start

# ...

for date in daterange(start_date, end_date, inclusive=True):
  print strftime("%Y-%m-%d", date.timetuple())

This function does more than you strictly require, by supporting negative step, etc. As long as you factor out your range logic, then you don't need the separate day_count and most importantly the code becomes easier to read as you call the function from multiple places.