minusMonths

MinusMonths is a function commonly found in programming libraries and date manipulation tools. Its primary purpose is to subtract a specified number of months from a given date. The function typically takes two arguments: the starting date and the number of months to subtract.

When calculating a date that is a certain number of months in the past, minusMonths handles various edge cases. For example, if subtracting months results in a day that does not exist in the target month (such as subtracting one month from March 31st, which would land on February 31st), the function usually adjusts the day to the last day of the preceding month. Similarly, it accounts for leap years when calculating dates across February.

The output of minusMonths is a new date object representing the calculated past date. This function is essential for applications requiring date arithmetic, such as calculating subscription renewal dates, analyzing historical trends, or scheduling recurring events. Different programming languages and libraries might have slightly different implementations or names for this functionality, but the core concept of subtracting months from a date remains consistent. For instance, in JavaScript, the `date-fns` library provides a `subMonths` function with similar behavior.