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I'd like to write a function that behaves one way when the argument is a Mathematica date, such as {2013,12,15}, or with added hours, minutes and seconds if necessary. And the function needs to do something different with strings that will look like

2013 Month 02

I see that I can specify List, as in f[x_List] and f[x_String] that will do what I want as long as I don't mess up the arguments. Is there way to be more specific about the patterns that are allowed?

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  • $\begingroup$ You can be as specific as you want tutorial/Putting constraints on patterns Anything in particular? $\endgroup$
    – ssch
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 1:56
  • $\begingroup$ so you only want to enter dates as lists or do you want to enter them as strings as well and differentiate between non-date strings? $\endgroup$
    – Mike Honeychurch
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 2:04
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    $\begingroup$ Related: mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/34338/… $\endgroup$
    – RunnyKine
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 6:36
  • $\begingroup$ I'll just use the standard mma format since I'm reading the dates in from a file. $\endgroup$
    – Mitchell Kaplan
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 19:12
  • $\begingroup$ @MitchellKaplan Is it your earlier account: Mitchell Kaplan? If yes, the both should be merged. $\endgroup$
    – Artes
    Commented Oct 31, 2013 at 16:10

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There is a DateQ in the Calendar package. You can test the head of DateList["string"] to make your own dateStringQ. So f[x_?DateQ] and f[x_?dateStringQ] will do.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, I didn't know I could do that. $\endgroup$
    – Mitchell Kaplan
    Commented Oct 29, 2013 at 19:12

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