Has anyone come across a script / cl app written in any language that handles the parsing of human-entered dates well? I'd love to be able to parse, for example:
- "3 to 4 weeks"
- "2 - 3 days"
- "3 weeks to 2 months"
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Jordan Sitkin
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possible duplicate of [fuzzy timestamp parsing with Python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1258712/fuzzy-timestamp-parsing-with-python) – Eli Bendersky Aug 13 '10 at 04:12
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You can try http://www.datejs.com, it parses well usual date inputs but won't handle your 3 examples. I'm curious... What would you expect as a Javascript date for ie:"3 to 4 weeks"? – Mic Aug 13 '10 at 08:40
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possible duplicate of [Is there a natural language parser for dates/times in ColdFusion?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1003330/is-there-a-natural-language-parser-for-dates-times-in-coldfusion) – Ben Doom Aug 13 '10 at 12:54
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@Mic I'm not sure what would be most useful, but off the top of my head it would be cool if the parser could interpret a "min/max" date range when given a starting date (most often "Now") and a string such as those above. These examples would be "lead time" values in my app - ie, a user responds with a time window in which they can deliver their product. – Jordan Sitkin Aug 13 '10 at 18:57
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@Mic to clarify my above comment: I would expect the hypothetical script to return **two** Date objects given one of the strings above and a starting date. – Jordan Sitkin Aug 13 '10 at 19:05
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The Chronic gem for ruby will allow you to express dates in a natural form.
Some examples of supported forms (from the documentation)
thursday november summer friday 13:00 mon 2:35 4pm yesterday at 4:00 last friday at 20:00 last week tuesday tomorrow at 6:45pm afternoon yesterday thursday last week 3 years ago 5 months before now 7 hours ago 7 days from now 1 week hence in 3 hours 1 year ago tomorrow
I have not used it so can not comment on its performance.
Steve Weet
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