Parsing ISO date/time strings - where did the parser go?

[Roy Smith]

In article <mailman.323.1346961101.27098.python-list at python.org>,
 Thomas Jollans <t at jollybox.de> wrote:

> The ISO date/time format is dead simple and well-defined.

Well defined, perhaps.  But nobody who has read the standard could call 
it "dead simple".  ISO-8601-2004(E) is 40 pages long.

Of course, that fact that it's complicated enough to generate 40 pages 
worth of standards document just argues that much more strongly for it 
being in the standard lib (so there can be one canonical, well-tested, 
way to do it).