Converting a readable date & time string to a datetime object in Python

Question

I am trying to convert a date and time string such as "Mar 15, 2016 10:47:15" into a Python datetime object using strptime. I believe I have the formatting correct however I still get a ValueError exception when I run the below:

>>> s = "Mar 15, 2016 10:47:15"
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime(s,"%b %m, %Y %H:%M:%S")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/_strptime.py", line 325, in _strptime
    (data_string, format))
ValueError: time data 'Mar 15, 2016 10:47:15' does not match format '%b %m, %Y %H:%M:%S'

Any ideas as to what may be wrong with my format string?

Community · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-20 09:12:55Z

1

The second item in the format string (%m) refers to month. Changing it to %d will make your code work.

datetime.datetime.strptime(s,"%b %d, %Y %H:%M:%S")

Here are the relevant parts from strptime documentation:

%d Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number. 01, 02, ..., 31

%m Month as a zero-padded decimal number. 01, 02, ..., 12

edited Jun 20, 2020 at 9:12

CommunityBot

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answered Mar 16, 2016 at 13:44

niemmi

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1 Comment

Luke Bishop Over a year ago

Ugh, can't believe I missed that! Cheers

Eugene Lisitsky · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-16 13:56:33Z

0

Month name is locale-specific. If you want to use english months names set for application English-based locale like en_US.

    $ env LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 python
    >>> import datetime
    >>> s = "Mar 15, 2016 10:47:15"
    >>> datetime.datetime.strptime(s,"%b %d, %Y %H:%M:%S")
    datetime.datetime(2016, 3, 15, 10, 47, 15)

P.S. %m replaced with %d, which means day.

edited Mar 16, 2016 at 13:56

answered Mar 16, 2016 at 13:51

Eugene Lisitsky

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