Suggest using ISO 8601 for display of Period and PeriodIndex

[timcera]

As of pandas 0.8.1, the Period and PeriodIndex display uses the English abbreviations for the month. Suggest that ISO 8601, would be a better choice.

Annual Period is fine...

z =PeriodIndex([Period('2012'), Period('2013')])

z
Out[182]:
<class 'pandas.tseries.period.PeriodIndex'>
freq: A-DEC
[2012, ..., 2013]
length: 2

Monthly though...

In [185]: z =PeriodIndex([Period('2012-01'), Period('2012-02')])

In [186]: z
Out[186]:
<class 'pandas.tseries.period.PeriodIndex'>
freq: M
[Jan-2012, ..., Feb-2012]
length: 2

I think that 'z' instead should be:

In [186]: z
Out[186]:
<class 'pandas.tseries.period.PeriodIndex'>
freq: M
[2012-01, ..., 2012-02]
length: 2

Hourly currently is

z =PeriodIndex([Period('2012-01-01 00', freq='H'), Period('2012-01-01 01', freq='H')])

z
Out[193]:
<class 'pandas.tseries.period.PeriodIndex'>
freq: H
[01-Jan-2012 00:00, ..., 01-Jan-2012 01:00]
length: 2

The ISO 8601 standard representation of hourly Periods would be:

In [186]: z
Out[186]:
<class 'pandas.tseries.period.PeriodIndex'>
freq: M
[2012-01-01 00, ..., 2012-01-01 01]
length: 2

Advantages:
Not English centric
Directly sortable chronologically without parsing

Kindest regards,
Tim

[wesm]

Agreed