scrapinghub / scrapinghub/dateparser

Timezone parser fails on hyphen-like characters

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Description

When hyphen-like characters are passed the parser ignores them, producing an incorrect output. An example of this in the wild would be on wikipedia, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UTC_offsets, which uses the “−” U+2212 Minus Sign Unicode Character.

example = dateparser.parse("jan 15th UTC−06:00")
tzname = example.tzname()
> 2023-01-15 06:00:00+00:00
> UTC

I believe updating the regex to handle some or all of the "Unicode Dash Characters" under figure 6-3 at http://www.unicode.org/versions/latest/ch06.pdf would be quite beneficial. This table is available online on various websites as well if you'd rather not download the file.

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Research direction

Start by locating the timezone parsing regex and reproduce the provided dateparser.parse example with U+2212. Done means hyphen-like Unicode characters in UTC offsets are recognized and the parsed result has the expected offset and timezone name.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
48/100

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