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Asked: 2026-05-11T14:02:37+00:00

I am able to parse strings containing date/time with time.strptime >>> import time >>>

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I am able to parse strings containing date/time with time.strptime

>>> import time >>> time.strptime('30/03/09 16:31:32', '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S') (2009, 3, 30, 16, 31, 32, 0, 89, -1)

How can I parse a time string that contains milliseconds?

>>> time.strptime('30/03/09 16:31:32.123', '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S') Traceback (most recent call last):   File '<stdin>', line 1, in <module>   File '/usr/lib/python2.5/_strptime.py', line 333, in strptime     data_string[found.end():]) ValueError: unconverted data remains: .123
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1 Answer

  1. Python 2.6 added a new strftime/strptime macro %f. The docs are a bit misleading as they only mention microseconds, but %f actually parses any decimal fraction of seconds with up to 6 digits, meaning it also works for milliseconds or even centiseconds or deciseconds.

    time.strptime('30/03/09 16:31:32.123', '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S.%f')

    However, time.struct_time doesn’t actually store milliseconds/microseconds. You’re better off using datetime, like this:

    >>> from datetime import datetime >>> a = datetime.strptime('30/03/09 16:31:32.123', '%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S.%f') >>> a.microsecond 123000

    As you can see, .123 is correctly interpreted as 123 000 microseconds.

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