Parsing text into dates?

[Thomas W]

I'm developing a web-application where the user sometimes has to enter
dates in plain text, allthough a format may be provided to give clues.
On the server side this piece of text has to be parsed into a datetime
python-object. Does anybody have any pointers on this?

Besides the actual parsing, my main concern is the different locale
date formats and how to be able to parse those strange us-like
"month/day/year" compared to the clever and intuitive european-style
"day/month/year" etc.

I've searched google, but haven't found any good referances that helped
me solve this problem, especially with regards to the locale date
format issues.

Best regards,
Thomas