Month Name in Upper case

Question

Possible Duplicate:
How do I “unprotect” an argument?

I'm trying to print date at title page of a document as NOVEMBER 2012. I'm using the datetime package to format the date as month name-year, but I can not capitalize the month name.

Here is my shot:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{datetime}

\begin{document}
\newdateformat{mydate}{\monthname~\THEYEAR}
\MakeUppercase{\mydate\today}
\end{document}

This fails to capitalize the month name. I guess the reason is \today is redefined as a macro and there is a \protect somewhere in the chain of definitions. I realized that a possible workaround is not using datetime and defining \today by myself. But I wonder can anyone come up with a neat solution that uses datetime?

Answer 1

\MakeUppercase needs expandable commands. The macros of datetime are far from being expandable (protect macros, optional arguments, assignments, …). If you do not need the date in an expandable context, then the month names could be redefined as uppercase strings, e.g.:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{datetime}

\begin{document}
\newdateformat{mydate}{\monthname~\THEYEAR}
\begingroup
  \makeatletter
  \renewcommand*{\monthnameenglish}[1][\month]{%
    \@orgargctr=#1\relax
    \ifcase\@orgargctr
      \PackageError{datetime}%
        {Invalid Month number \the\@orgargctr}%
        {Month numbers should go from 1 (January) to 12 (December)}%
    \or JANUARY\or FEBRUARY\or MARCH\or APRIL\or MAY\or JUNE\or JULY%
    \or AUGUST\or SEPTEMBER\or OCTOBER\or NOVEMBER\or DECEMBER%
    \else
      \PackageError{datetime}%
        {Invalid Month number \the\@orgargctr}%
        {Month numbers should go from 1 (January) to 12 (December)}%
    \fi
  }%
  \mydate\today
\endgroup
\end{document}