[Jprogramming] comparison

[Raul Miller]

On 4/7/07, Brian Schott <schott.brian at gmail.com> wrote:
>         Person A's birthday is Feb 5th
>         Person B's birthday is Sep 5th
>
>         Their birtday's are 5 or 7 months apart depending on
> something (which I can't quite express); and how can this be
> represented/computed in code?

You've already got several guesses at what you intend..

Here's how I'd approach this:
   bmonthA=: 1980 2
   bmonthB=: 1980 7

   bmonthB -&(0 12&#.) bmonthA
5

   bmonthC=:1979 7
   bmonthA -&(0 12&#.) bmonthC
7

Put differently: celebrations of person A's birthday occur
on Feb 5th, but if you are concerned about the day person A
was born you need to be more specific.  Alternatively, if you
are only concerned about the relative time from one instance
of a birthday celebration to the next, it probably matters which
birthday is the "current birthday".

-- 
Raul