For example:

import polars as pl

dates = pl.DataFrame(pl.Series("date", ["2024,2", "2024,12"]))
dates = dates.with_columns(pl.col("date").str.to_date("%Y,%m"))

This does not work because of the missing day. Python’s strptime adds a day of 1:

from time import strptime

strptime("2024,2", "%Y,%m")

Is there any way to do something similar with polars, apart from just attaching to the strings a day?

import polars as pl

dates = pl.DataFrame(pl.Series("date", ["2024,2", "2024,12"]))
dates = dates.with_columns((pl.col("date") + ",1").str.to_date(r"%Y,%m,%d"))

Which is an okay solution, but it does unnecessary work. So the best solution I have come up with in terms of not doing repetitive work is:

import polars as pl

dates = pl.DataFrame(pl.Series("date", ["2024,2", "2024,12"]))
dates = (
    dates.with_columns(
        pl.col("date").str.split(",").list.to_struct(fields=["year", "month"])
    )
    .unnest("date")
    .with_columns(date=pl.date(pl.col("year"), pl.col("month"), 1))
)