DEPR: deprecate pandas/io/date_converters.py

[mroeschke]

This file contains one function that is used elsewhere in the code base (that can be moved), and the rest is unused and not advertised in the api.

Raising this issue to gauge whether we should outright remove it or deprecate this file since its technically public in io

[jreback]

yeah let's do it. I also think you can just remove the generic_parser branch entirely (meaning just fully deprecate this), I think to_datetime handles all of these cases

[jorisvandenbossche]

Yes, I think the original idea behind this was to have functions that could be passed to read_csv's date_parser function. But there are much better ways to do that (to_datetime, or a way to provide a date format in read_csv that is discussed elsewhere).
So happy to see it deprecated

[jbrockmendel]

definitely go for it.

[jbrockmendel]

Is any of this user-facing (i.e.need deprecation cycle) or can we just rip it out?

[mroeschke]

The conservative thing to do is go through a deprecation cycle, but since this is not advertised anywhere ripping it out might be okay.

[jorisvandenbossche]

This is documented (https://dev.pandas.io/docs/user_guide/io.html#date-parsing-functions), so certainly needs to be deprecated first I think

[avinashpancham]

take