I want to convert a lot of french dates in date to time
(date-to-time "june 7 2021 12:00:00" )
=>
(24765 60960)
(date-to-time "7 juin 2021 12:00:00" )
=>
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid date: 7 juin 2021 12:00:00")
Should I translate the french date in english ?
You can override the global variables parse-time-months and parse-time-weekdays, which are alists from month/weekday names to their respective numbers. These variables are undocumented, but they've been around for over two decades.
(defvar parse-time-months-french
'(("jan" . 1) ("fév" . 2) ("mar" . 3)
("avr" . 4) ("mai" . 5) ("jun" . 6)
("jul" . 7) ("aoû" . 8) ("sep" . 9)
("oct" . 10) ("nov" . 11) ("déc" . 12)
("janvier" . 1) ("février" . 2)
("mars" . 3) ("avril" . 4) ("juin" . 6)
("juillet" . 7) ("août" . 8)
("septembre" . 9) ("octobre" . 10)
("novembre" . 11) ("décembre" . 12)))
(defvar parse-time-weekdays-french
'(("dim" . 0) ("lun" . 1) ("mar" . 2)
("mer" . 3) ("jeu" . 4) ("ven" . 5)
("sam" . 6) ("dimanche" . 0) ("lundi" . 1)
("mardi" . 2) ("mercredi" . 3)
("jeudi" . 4) ("vendredi" . 5)
("samedi" . 6)))
(defun date-to-time-french (date)
"Like `date-to-time', but require French names."
(let ((parse-time-months parse-time-months-french)
(parse-time-weekdays parse-time-weekdays-french))
(date-to-time date)))
(defun date-to-time-french-english (date)
"Like `date-to-time', but recognize French names as well as English names."
(let ((parse-time-months (append parse-time-months-french parse-time-months))
(parse-time-weekdays (append parse-time-weekdays-french parse-time-weekdays)))
(date-to-time date)))
