The Oregon Trail Project - Part 2 - Dates

Oregon Trail Project

• Part 0 : Intro
• Part 1 : Markdown to Spectre Console
• Part 2 : Dates (this one)

After spending nearly three weeks getting installment #1 out, I figured I should get the next one out quickly, especially since Virtual Coffee’s Blogging Challenge have only a few days left.

Fortunately, the next topic is one I can crank out fast: Fixing how the BASIC code handled dates.

It goes like this: given an integer number of weeks, return a string of the date that many weeks from the start of the trek (27-Mar-1847), in the form MONDAY MARCH 29 1847.

In the original, it took quite a bit on rather monotonous code to handle this:

1250  D3=D3+1
1260  PRINT 
1270  PRINT "MONDAY ";
1280  IF D3>10 THEN 1300
1290  GOTO D3 OF 1310,1330,1350,1370,1390,1410,1430,1450,1470,1490
1300  GOTO D3-10 OF 1510,1530,1550,1570,1590,1610,1630,1650,1670,1690
1310  PRINT "APRIL 12 ";
1320  GOTO 1720
1330  PRINT "APRIL 26 ";
1340  GOTO 1720
1350  PRINT "MAY 10 ";
1360  GOTO 1720
1370  PRINT "MAY 24 ";

That goes on for 50 lines — in a program that’s only 695 lines total — that’s over 7%.

Fortunately, .NET build date handling and format right into the framework. All of that can be replaced by:

public static string CurrentDate(int fortnights, int extraDays = 0) 
    => new DateTime(1847, 3, 29)
        .AddDays(fortnights * 14 + extraDays)
        .ToString("dddd MMMM d yyyy");