Generate a simple list of dates with datetime in Python

Question

I am trying to create a list L of dates from '2020-01-22' to '2020-01-25' (very small example...). So I expect to get:

print(L)
['2020-01-22', '2020-01-23', '2020-01-24', '2020-01-25']

I used (because I thought it was enough):

import pandas as pd
from datetime import datetime
L = pd.date_range(start='2020-01-22',end='2020-01-25').tolist()

But this gives me:

[Timestamp('2020-01-22 00:00:00', freq='D'),
 Timestamp('2020-01-23 00:00:00', freq='D'),
 Timestamp('2020-01-24 00:00:00', freq='D'),
 Timestamp('2020-01-25 00:00:00', freq='D')]

I really have a problem understanding how datetime works; should I import something else? What would be a proper simple coding to have in my list just the dates '2020-01-22', etc. in that precise format?

list(pd.date_range(start='2020-01-22',end='2020-01-25').strftime('%Y-%m-%d')) — Quang Hoang
– Quang Hoang, Commented Apr 22, 2020 at 15:01

jezrael · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-22 15:01:39Z

3

You need converting to strings by DatetimeIndex.strftime:

L = pd.date_range(start='2020-01-22',end='2020-01-25').strftime('%Y-%m-%d').tolist()
print (L)
['2020-01-22', '2020-01-23', '2020-01-24', '2020-01-25']

Here also working converting to strings (I think because 00:00:00 times):

L = pd.date_range(start='2020-01-22',end='2020-01-25').astype(str).tolist()
print (L)
['2020-01-22', '2020-01-23', '2020-01-24', '2020-01-25']

answered Apr 22, 2020 at 15:01

jezrael

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1 Comment

Andrew Over a year ago

Great thanks to you, python specialists ! So simple, but I could have spent hours on it...

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