problem with dateutil

[Gary Herron]

On 02/13/2016 12:27 PM, Tom P wrote:
> On 02/13/2016 07:13 PM, Gary Herron wrote:
>> On 02/13/2016 09:58 AM, Tom P wrote:
>>> I am writing a program that has to deal with various date/time formats
>>> and convert these into timestamps. It looks as if
>>> dateutil.parser.parse should be able to handle about any format, but
>>> what I get is:
>>>
>>> datetimestr = '2012-10-22 11:22:33'
>>> print(dateutil.parser.parse(datetimestr))
>>> result: datetime.datetime(2012, 10, 22, 11, 22, 33)
>>>
>>> However:
>>> datetimestr = '2012:10:22 11:22:33'
>>> print(dateutil.parser.parse(datetimestr))
>>> result: datetime.datetime(2016, 2, 13, 11, 22, 33)
>>>
>>> In other words, it's getting the date wrong when colons are used to
>>> separate YYYY:MM:DD. Is there a way to include this as a valid format?
>>>
>>
>> Yes, there is a way to specify your own format.  Search the datetime
>> documentation for
>>      datetime.strptime(date_string, format)
>>
>> Gary Herron
>>
>
> Thanks.  I started out with datetime.strptime but AFAICS that means I 
> have to go through try/except for every conceivable format. Are you 
> saying that I can't use dateutil.parser?

Well now...  If by "every conceivable format" you are including formats 
that the author of dateutil.parser did not conceive of, then of course 
you cannot use dateutil.parser.   But you have the code for 
dateutil.parser -- perhaps you could modify it to accept whatever odd 
formats you care about.

Gary Herron


-- 
Dr. Gary Herron
Department of Computer Science
DigiPen Institute of Technology
(425) 895-4418