[Tutor] Processing unix style timestamp

[Kent Johnson]

Ravi Kondamuru wrote:
> I looked at datetime, but it seems slightly complex to work with non GMT 
> timestamps.

Mark Pilgrim's Universal Feed Parser includes a robust date parser that 
works with your sample:
In [1]: import feedparser as fp
In [2]: fp._parse_date('Mon Feb 11 01:34:52 CST 2008')
Out[2]: (2008, 2, 11, 7, 34, 52, 0, 42, 0)

http://www.feedparser.org/

This appears to be an RFC 2822-format date:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html

feedparser uses these functions to parse the date string:
In [4]: import rfc822
In [5]: rfc822.parsedate_tz('Mon Feb 11 01:34:52 CST 2008')
Out[5]: (2008, 2, 11, 1, 34, 52, 0, 1, 0, -21600)
In [7]: rfc822.mktime_tz(_5)
Out[7]: 1202715292.0
In [8]: import time
In [9]: time.gmtime(_7)
Out[9]: (2008, 2, 11, 7, 34, 52, 0, 42, 0)

The rfc822 module is deprecated; the same functions are now found in 
email.util.

Kent