strptime - dates formatted differently on different computers

[Dave Angel]

On 12/10/2012 04:18 PM, noydb wrote:
> Follow-on question to this earlier topic - https://groups.google.com/d/topic/comp.lang.python/wnUlPBBNah8/discussion 

For those who avoid googlegroups with a passion, and/or don't have
internet access, the subject of that thread is "date-time comparison,
aware vs naive", on this same mailing list.

> Was curious to know if there was a way to handle different user computers with different operating system set date formats.  2/10/2006 vs 2-10-2006, for example.  Not an issue for my current task, but was just curious how this could be handled?
>
> If in my code I am declaring the user entered date foramtted as
> x = datetime.datetime.strptime(user_entered_time , "%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p") # format for my computer
>
> but on another person's computer, their's is set as 2-10-2006 14:26:06, the code fails.

You can save people a lot of time if you just think before posting. 
What do you define as failure?  is your motherboard smoking, or is the
final result off by a second?
Please reread my last message on the previous thread.  If you want us to
give you code advice, show us what you're doing, don't just describe it
in vague terms.

>  Can this be accounted for?

When accepting input from a user, consider their environment.  Perhaps
they're in a different timezone than your program (or your native
location), or use some other ordering for the date (for example, the
Japanese sensibly put year first, then month, then day.  Other regions
have different conventions.  If you can't detect the user environment,
then you'd better tell them yours.  For example,by prompting for day,
month, and year separately.


-- 

DaveA