Cycling through a list of months with years to check if file exists

Question

I am trying to cycle through a list of months with years starting from the year of 2012 and month of November, all the way up to the current year and month.

start_year = "2012"
start_month = "November"

month = start_month
year = start_year

# some sort of for loop or cycle here
    try:
        with open('{} {}.csv'.format(month, year)):
           CSVFile = True
        if CSVFile:
            print "do something cool here"
    except IOError:
        CSVFile = False
    print ""

Any advice or constructive comments on how to achive this or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks SMNALLY

Answer 1

I would probably do this as follows:

import datetime,  os

current_month = datetime.date.today().replace(day=1)
# this could be more concise if `start_month` were the month number rather than month name
possible_month = datetime.datetime.strptime('%s %s' % (start_month, start_year), '%B %Y').date()
while possible_month <= current_month:
    csv_filename = possible_month.strftime('%B %Y') + '.csv'
    if os.path.exists(csv_filename):
        CSVFile = True
        # do something cool here, and maybe break the loop if you like
    possible_month = (possible_month + datetime.timedelta(days=31)).replace(day=1)

Let me know if you need me to expand on how that works.