Reg Date string conversion into timestamp function

[Mike Meyer]

praba kar <prabapython at yahoo.co.in> writes:

> Dear All,
>
>      I have doubt regarding date string to time
> conversion function.  In Python I cannot find flexible
> date string conversion function like php strtotime. I
> try to use following type
> function
> 1) parsedate function failed if a date string
> like below format "16-MAY-2005 01:26"

parsedate is documented as trying to parse RFC 2822 dates. Your
example isn't one.

> 2)parsedate_tz function also failed if a date string
> is different format

See the above comments for why.

> if any one find some other date string conversion
> function kindly let me know

In my experience, it's not very common to have to deal with arbitrary
time/date strings formats. Typically, a source will only provide date
strings in one format, so you only have to be able to deal with that
format in your application. For instance, all dates in email headers
should follow RFC2822, which means the parsedate you found is adequate
for any application dealing with email headers.

Given the wide variety of date strings possible in the wild, a routine
that swallows a such a string and produces a date is going to have to
guess what format is being used - and there are formats that can't be
told apart for some dates. As such, such a routine isn't very
pythonic.

With all that said, you can use strptime to buid a date/time
parser. If you really need to deal with multiple formats from one
source, maybe if you describe your application some help could be
provided.

        <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.