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On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:35:29 AM UTC-5, Greg Donald wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 10:34:31PM -0700, Michael Torrie wrote:
>
> > I use a module I got from pypi called dateutil. It has a nice submodule
>
> > called parser that can handle a variety of date formats with good
>
> > accuracy. Not sure how it works, but it handles all the common American
>
> > date formats I've thrown at it.
>
>
>
> from dateutil.parser import parse
>
> dt = parse( whatever )
>
>
>
> I've throw all kind of date and timestamps at it.. have yet to see anything it won't parse.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Greg Donald


Thanks - I tried this (dateutil.parser import parsed...), and it works. I'm skeptical of it working for any crazy date string thrown at it, but for my purposes it should suffice -- and my purposes for now was purely just curiousity on how to handle if it became necessary.

I tried figuring out Steve D'Aprano's solution above on my system (windows 7, python 2.7) - no luck. Sorry, I am a newbie, so I'm a bit lost on this --- my locale module doesnt offer a nl_langinfo function -- why would this be?

On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:35:29 AM UTC-5, Greg Donald wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 10:34:31PM -0700, Michael Torrie wrote:
>
> > I use a module I got from pypi called dateutil. It has a nice submodule
>
> > called parser that can handle a variety of date formats with good
>
> > accuracy. Not sure how it works, but it handles all the common American
>
> > date formats I've thrown at it.
>
>
>
> from dateutil.parser import parse
>
> dt = parse( whatever )
>
>
>
> I've throw all kind of date and timestamps at it.. have yet to see anything it won't parse.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Greg Donald


Thanks - I tried this (dateutil.parser import parsed...), and it works. I'm skeptical of it working for any crazy date string thrown at it, but for my purposes it should suffice -- and my purposes for now was purely just curiousity on how to handle if it became necessary.

I tried figuring out Steve D'Aprano's solution above on my system (windows 7, python 2.7) - no luck. Sorry, I am a newbie, so I'm a bit lost on this --- my locale module doesnt offer a nl_langinfo function -- why would this be?

On Tue, 11 Dec 2012 02:35:29 -0600, Greg Donald wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 10:34:31PM -0700, Michael Torrie wrote:
>> I use a module I got from pypi called dateutil. It has a nice
>> submodule called parser that can handle a variety of date formats with
>> good accuracy. Not sure how it works, but it handles all the common
>> American date formats I've thrown at it.
>
> from dateutil.parser import parse
> dt = parse( whatever )
>
> I've throw all kind of date and timestamps at it.. have yet to see
> anything it won't parse.

The question is not "will it parse", but will it parse CORRECTLY?

What will it parse 11/12/10 as, and how do you know that is the intended
date?


--
Steven

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Marc Christiansen
<> wrote:
>>>> parse('1. Januar 2013')
> Traceback (most recent call last):
> File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
> File "/usr/lib64/python3.3/site-packages/dateutil/parser.py", line 720, in parse
> return DEFAULTPARSER.parse(timestr, **kwargs)
> File "/usr/lib64/python3.3/site-packages/dateutil/parser.py", line 310, in parse
> raise ValueError("unknown string format")
> ValueError: unknown string format

A parserinfo class can be passed to parse() for unknown locale strings.

>>>> parse('1.2.2013') # ambiguous, I know
> datetime.datetime(2013, 1, 2, 0, 0) # should be datetime.datetime(2013, 2, 1, 0, 0)

In [2]: parse('1.2.2013', dayfirst=True)
Out[2]: datetime.datetime(2013, 2, 1, 0, 0)



--
Greg Donald

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 11:05 PM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+> wrote:
> The question is not "will it parse", but will it parse CORRECTLY?
>
> What will it parse 11/12/10 as, and how do you know that is the intended
> date?

If it were me I'd look at more of the source dates I was tasked with
parsing and dial it in using the appropriate dayfirst, yearfirst, etc.
options.



--
Greg Donald