1.4.2 release

[serhii73]

Release notes and version bump for dateparser 1.4.2, following the same two-step approach used for 1.4.1 (#1337):

1. 1.4.2 release notes — add the 1.4.2 section to HISTORY.rst, summarizing every PR merged since v1.4.1.
2. Bump version: 1.4.1 → 1.4.2 — produced by bump-my-version bump patch, updating pyproject.toml, dateparser/__init__.py, and stamping the HISTORY.rst release date. SECURITY.md is unchanged because it tracks only major.minor (still 1.4.x).

Changelog

New features:

• Add an IGNORE_SURROUNDING_TEXT setting that, when enabled, retries parsing after ignoring the leading and trailing words the language does not recognize, so a date wrapped in extra text such as Published on 16/04/2019 is parsed (Parse dates wrapped in harmless extra text (Close #518) #1356)
• Add a strategy argument to search_dates() to choose the search strategy: the default "split" keeps the current behavior, while the new "ngram" strategy parses the longest sequences of tokens as dates for more predictable results on noisy text (Add "ngram" search strategy to search_dates #1351)

Fixes:

• Do not read a two-digit number as a year once a later component has been found in year-first date orders, so the day in Japanese dates such as 4月20日 is no longer consumed as the year (Do not read the day as a two-digit year after the year position #1358)
• Parse ISO 8601 dates (those starting with a four-digit year) in month-day order even when an explicit day-first language such as it or fr is given, without needing to set PREFER_LOCALE_DATE_ORDER to False (Fix ISO8601 parsing with explicit languages #1352)
• Honor PREFER_DATES_FROM and RELATIVE_BASE when parsing with custom date_formats that use a two-digit year (%y) (fix: Apply PREFER_DATES_FROM logic to custom date formats (Fixes #445) #1342)
• Honor the %j (day of year) directive in date_formats instead of overwriting the parsed month and day with the current date (fix: %j (day of year) format directive overwrote parsed month/day #1345)

Improvements:

• Update the bundled CLDR locale data to 44.1.0, adding many newly recognized date forms across locales and a standalone hour/duration unit (e.g. Catalan 2 hores), while keeping previously supported forms parseable (Update CLDR data to 44.1.0 and add hour/duration support #1343)
• Add the Italian expressions un ora fa and un'ora fa, and skip alle so phrases like oggi alle 11:00 parse (italian: support 'un ora fa', 'un'ora fa', 'oggi alle 11:00'. #1049)
• Expand Czech date translations with month locative/dative forms (e.g. v lednu 2023), the July abbreviation črv, and relative expressions such as za týden, za měsíc and za rok (Updated Czech localization #1172)
• Specify the README header content as RST rather than raw HTML (Specify README header content as RST #1360)

Validation

• bump-my-version bump patch produced a clean two-commit diff touching only HISTORY.rst, pyproject.toml, and dateparser/__init__.py; version is consistent across all three.
• python -m build + twine check pass for both the sdist and the wheel.
• Test suite green over the areas changed this cycle (test_search, test_clean_api, test_date, test_date_parser, test_languages, test_timezone_parser).

After merge

The v1.4.2 git tag is intentionally not included in this branch (a tag on a pre-merge branch would point at the wrong commit). After merging, tag the merge commit on master:

git tag v1.4.2 && git push origin v1.4.2

All PRs merged since v1.4.1 are included in the changelog above; there were no internal-only changes to omit this cycle.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 97.10%. Comparing base (ff3dcb9) to head (14f6ac1).

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##           master    #1361   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   97.10%   97.10%           
=======================================
  Files         236      236           
  Lines        3008     3008           
=======================================
  Hits         2921     2921           
  Misses         87       87           

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