Subtracting months from a date accurately

Using the calendar module

import calendar
from datetime import date

def monthdelta(date, delta):
    m, y = (date.month+delta) % 12, date.year + ((date.month)+delta-1) // 12
    if not m: m = 12
    d = min(date.day, calendar.monthrange(y, m)[1])
    return date.replace(day=d,month=m, year=y)

next_month = monthdelta(date.today(), 1) #datetime.date(2016, 10, 23)

Using the dateutils module

import datetime
import dateutil.relativedelta

d = datetime.datetime.strptime("2013-03-31", "%Y-%m-%d")
d2 = d - dateutil.relativedelta.relativedelta(months=1)  #datetime.datetime(2013, 2, 28, 0, 0)

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