Groundhog Day
Author: Paul King
Published: 2023-02-02 12:00AM
Ken Kousen posted a tweet in honor of Groundhog Day looking at the kotlinx-datetime library.
The North American tradition, or superstition, depending on how you view such things, is that if the Groundhog emerges from its burrow and sees its shadow, Winter will continue for 6 weeks, but otherwise Spring will come early.
Looking at the dates for 2023 (it differs slightly each year) we can see that Spring isn’t due for 6 weeks and 4 days, so if Spring starts in 6 weeks, it is early anyway! While it certainly falls into the category of nerds having fun, it’s a good simple example of using date library functionality.
This blog looks at a similar Groovy solution:
var groundHogDay = LocalDate.of(2023, FEBRUARY, 2)
var springEquinoxNorthernHemisphere = LocalDate.of(2023, MARCH, 20)
var expectedDays = use(TimeCategory) { 6.weeks + 4.days }.days
assert springEquinoxNorthernHemisphere - groundHogDay == expectedDays