CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondatetimestrptime
Jessica Dow
Jessica Dow

Reputation: 31

Python 3.4 strptime() not working

I am trying to convert a string to datetime and it isn't working...

self.loadsList[loadID][5] = datetime.strptime(
self.loadsList[loadID][5]+" "+self.loadsList[loadID][6], "%x %X %z")

and it raises a Value Error.

ValueError: time data '11/08/2014 04:00:00 -0500' does not match format '%x %X %z'

What am I doing wrong? Thanks! (Python 3.4)

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1689

Answers (1)

Martijn Pieters
Martijn Pieters

Reputation: 1124538

The default %x format is the equivalent of %d/%m/%y, where %y matches a two digit year:

>>> import locale
>>> locale.nl_langinfo(locale.D_FMT)
'%m/%d/%y'

Your input uses a 4 digit year instead:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.strptime('11/08/2014', '%x')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python3.4/_strptime.py", line 500, in _strptime_datetime
    tt, fraction = _strptime(data_string, format)
  File "/Users/mj/Development/Library/buildout.python/parts/opt/lib/python3.4/_strptime.py", line 340, in _strptime
    data_string[found.end():])
ValueError: unconverted data remains: 14

I'd not use %x or %X, just spell out the date and time formats; based on your input and the use of %x that'd be:

'%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %z'

Demo:

>>> datetime.strptime('11/08/2014 04:00:00 -0500', '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %z')
datetime.datetime(2014, 11, 8, 4, 0, tzinfo=datetime.timezone(datetime.timedelta(-1, 68400)))

It is not clear if your input represents the 8th day of November or the 11th day of August; your use of %x suggests the former but I suspect you should instead interpret the value the other way around:

'%d/%m/%Y %H:%M:%S %z'

The alternative would be to switch your Python locale from the default C to en_US where the year would use 4 digits.

Upvotes: 3

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