Support Writing Dates As Per User Input

[the-solipsist]

Currently I open hledger-iadd using this command:

$ hledger-iadd --date-format [[%Y-]%m-]%d -f Accounts/2017.ledger

Yet, when I look at the dates entered in the file, they always follow the Y/m/d format. Is --date-format only by hledger-iadd for reading dates, rather than for writing them? Is it possible to support writing of dats in a different format too?

[t-wissmann]

The file format as specified by hledger restricts the date format to Y/M/D, Y-M-D, and Y.M.D: http://hledger.org/journal.html#dates
So not all date formats configurable in hledger-iadd are allowed. If hledger-iadd is made configurable for that, it should be another switch (and config option), e.g. --journal-date-format.

[hpdeifel]

Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier.

As @t-wissmann noted, only certain date formats are allowed, so this is related to simonmichael/hledger#210.

Also, we currently use the showTransaction function from hledger-lib which formats transactions like the hledger print command would. I think that's the way to go, so if we really want different formats, that should be implemented in hledger-lib.

@the-solipsist What's your use case? Do you want a completely different date format or do you just want to omit the year?

[hpdeifel]

As a side note, the documentation should be clearer on --date-format.

[the-solipsist]

I prefer using an ISO 8601-style format of YYYY-MM-DD.

[the-solipsist]

I just wanted to leave a note that this is currently waiting on simonmichael/hledger#933