date handling issue in Python

Question

I'm working on a project that deals with dates. The user enters the month (in terms of a number - so "3", not "March") and a year (2005), and then it returns "March 2005 has 31 days. I'm nearly finished, but instead of returning the name of the month, it returns the number. So it says:

3 2005 has 31 days.

Here's my code:

def enteredMonth():
    month = int(input("Enter a month in terms of a number: "))
    if month == 1:
        month = "January"
    elif month == 2:
        month = "February"
    elif month == 3:
        month = "March"
    elif month == 4:
        month = "April"
    elif month == 5:
        month = "May"
    elif month == 6:
        month = "June"
    elif month == 7:
        month = "July"
    elif month == 8:
        month = "August"
    elif month == 9:
        month = "September"
    elif month == 10:
        month = "October"
    elif month == 11:
        month = "November"
    elif month == 12:
        month = "December"
    return month

def main():
    month = int(input("Enter a month in terms of a number: "))
    year = int(input("Enter a year: "))
    print(month, year, "has", numberOfDays(month, year) , "days")

How do I tweak the code so it returns the name of the month, not the number that the user entered?

Please help! I really appreciate it.

Put the result in a separate variable, and return that instead. FWIW, a dictionary probably works better here. — Robert Harvey, Feb 06 '14 at 22:06
See here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6557553/get-month-name-from-number — Robert Harvey, Feb 06 '14 at 22:09
@RobertHarvey Is there any way to do it without using that method? — user3105664, Feb 06 '14 at 22:10
If this is not an exercise: `return datetime.date(1970, month, 1).strftime("%B")` — Brave Sir Robin, Feb 06 '14 at 22:10

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 06 '14 at 22:10

1

You have your function, enteredMonth(), but never use it in your code.

print(enteredMonth(month), year, "has", numberOfDays(month, year), "days")

But a much better way to optimize enteredMonth is by simply using a dictionary:

months = {
    1: 'January'
    2: 'February'
    ...
}

Then you can access each month's string with its number, like so:

>>> months[1]
'January'
>>> months[4]
'April'

answered Feb 06 '14 at 22:10

jayelm

7,236
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@akaRem how would I use a tuple? – jayelm Feb 06 '14 at 22:15
{1:<1>, 2:<2>, ..} -> (<1>, <2>, ...), so .. indexing works, add/append/pop does not, but you don't need it in case of months – akaRem Feb 06 '14 at 22:20
@akaRem except indices start at 0, which raises the problems I brought up under Oscar's answer. – jayelm Feb 06 '14 at 22:21

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 06 '14 at 22:09

0

Would something like this work?

def getmonthname:
    months = ['January', 'February', ... , 'December']
    return months[month - 1]

answered Feb 06 '14 at 22:09

Michael Wheeler

670
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date handling issue in Python

2 Answers2