Issue #10040 has been updated by Nathan Broadbent. > Nathan, Date is only available in stdlib (maybe it should be moved to core) so I don't think those literals will work for dates with "D". I would definitely vote to move Date to core, I think that's a great idea > > One possibility: > > ~~~ > 20140715T == 20140715T000000 > 20140715TZ == 20140715T000000Z > 20140715T.to_date > ~~~ Yep, I think `20140715T` or `20140715T.to_date` could be really useful. ---------------------------------------- Feature #10040: `%d` and `%t` shorthands for `Date.new(*args)` and `Time.new(*args)` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/10040#change-47812 * Author: Nathan Broadbent * Status: Open * Priority: Normal * Assignee: * Category: * Target version: ---------------------------------------- I'm working on a Ruby application where we have to deal with a lot of dates and times, especially in our test suite. We currently have a couple thousand cases of `Date.new(...)`, and I'm finding the syntax to be a little unwieldy. What do you think about the following shorthand suggestions? ```ruby %d(2014, 7, 15) # Equivalent to: Date.new(2014, 7, 15) %t(2014, 7, 15, 12, 58, 45) # Equivalent to: Time.new(2014, 7, 15, 12, 58, 45) ``` I added commas because I think the syntax should also support variables: ```ruby year = 2014 month = 7 %d(year, month, 15) # Equivalent to: Date.new(year, month, 15) ``` I understand that this will operate a bit differently to `%w` and `%i`, but I think that supporting variable evaluation would be a lot more useful. An alternative proposal would be to add `[]` methods to `Date` and `Time`, so that we could call: ```ruby Date[2014, 7, 15] Time[2014, 7, 15, 12, 58, 43] ``` This would be still be a little shorter and nicer to use. Please let me know if you would like me to open a feature ticket for `Date.[]` and `Time.[]` methods, instead. Please let me know your thoughts. Would you find a shorter date/time syntax useful? -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/