This answer notes that Calendar package has a function DateQ but the documentation suggests that the input is limited to a fixed format YY,MM,DD etc. Is there a more robust way to check any String for date-form ?
(Self answer, below)
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3 Answers
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A simpler version very similar in spirit to your own solution:
dateQ = Composition[Quiet, NumberQ, AbsoluteTime]
answered Jun 4, 2014 at 14:56
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Rather than creating your own function, the built in way to check any string is to use StringMatchQ and DatePattern. From the docs:
answered Jun 4, 2014 at 23:11
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$\begingroup$ Mike- nice and a +1. I'm going to stick with Szabolcs' approach as it works across all the test cases without prior knowledge of the formatting. The use-case was checking data from a spreadsheet that had a variety of date formats. $\endgroup$ Jun 5, 2014 at 0:10
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One basic approach:
refDate = "Jan 1 2012";
dateQ[input_] :=
!TrueQ@Quiet@Check[DateDifference[input, refDate], True]
Testing
test={"dog",dog,"Jan 1 2012", "January 1 2012", "1/1/2012","1/1/12","Q2 2014", "2014 Q1","2014Q2"};
dateQ/@test
(*OUTPUT*)
{False, False, True, True, True, True, True, True, True}
Of course, this approach could be further modified to pass values for Calander-> and suitable refDate to the function.
DatePattern$\endgroup$