Removing “de” preposition in Month/Year date format

Question

I want to have the date of my document with a Month/Year format such as "May 2016". To accomplish this I have followed the instructions in this answer and this article.

This is the code:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[catalan]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{datetime}

\newdateformat{monthyeardate}{\monthname[\THEMONTH] \THEYEAR}

\title{Title}
\author{Author}
\date{\monthyeardate\today}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\end{document}

However, since my document is written in Catalan, when I compile it, the date contains the "de" preposition as you can see in the following picture:

This preposition is completely unnecessary and should not appear, so for instance, the date should read "maig 2016".

The default date construction is: "15 de maig de 2016", see how the number 15 and the right-hand side "de" preposition are correctly removed, but not the left-hand side "de".

How can I fix this problem?

Answer 1

A very elementary approach, with an \ifcase... statement and the month and year count registers. This is not hardcoded then (except the month names in \monthcatalan ;-)

The day, month and year registers are always available and can be printed with \the\day etc. By default, they return the date reported by the OS.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[catalan]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\def\monthcatalan#1{%
  \ifcase#1
  \or gener%
  \or febrer%
  \or març%
  \or abril%
  \or meig%
  \or juny%
  \or juliol%
  \or agost%
  \or setembre%
  \or octubre%
  \or novembre%
  \or deciembre%
  \fi
}



\title{Title}
\author{Author}


\date{\monthcatalan{\month} \the\year}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\end{document}