bpo-30802: strptime() directives %W and %U -- Make weekday optional and assume the first day of the week

[ghost]

Motivation

1. A year and a week number is enough to get a meaningful result
2. When getting a date of the beginning of the week, the minimal amount of data required is a year and a week number. Specifying a weekday in that case is a violation of DRY principle and is error-prone.

Example

# When does the week start?

# BAD:    did I change %U to %W but forgot about %a?
#         or is this supposed to be the END of the week?
>>> datetime.strptime ('2019 3 Sun', '%Y %W %a')
datetime.datetime(2019, 1, 27, 0, 0)

# error-prone
>>> datetime.strptime ('2019 3 Mon', '%Y %W %a')
datetime.datetime(2019, 1, 21, 0, 0)

# error-prone
>>> datetime.strptime ('2019 3 Sun', '%Y %U %a')
datetime.datetime(2019, 1, 20, 0, 0)

# OK
>>> datetime.strptime ('2019 3',     '%Y %W')
datetime.datetime(2019, 1, 21, 0, 0)

# OK
>>> datetime.strptime ('2019 3',     '%Y %U')
datetime.datetime(2019, 1, 20, 0, 0)

https://bugs.python.org/issue30802

[csabella]

@pganssle, would you be able to review this? Thanks!

[pganssle]

@csabella Yes I will review, thank you for the ping!

[ghost]

@pganssle @abalkin
Review, please