Question

I have a bunch of excel documents I am extracting dates from. I am trying to convert these to a standard format so I can put them in a database. Is there a function I can throw these strings at and get a standard format back? Here is a small sample of my data:

The good thing is I know it is always Month/Day

10/02/09
07/22/09
09-08-2008
9/9/2008
11/4/2010
 03-07-2009
09/01/2010

I’d like to get them all into MM/DD/YYYY format. Is there a way I can do this without trying each pattern against the string?

Answer 1

import re

ss = '''10/02/09
07/22/09
09-08-2008
9/9/2008
11/4/2010
03-07-2009
09/01/2010'''


regx = re.compile('[-/]')
for xd in ss.splitlines():
    m,d,y = regx.split(xd)
    print xd,'   ','/'.join((m.zfill(2),d.zfill(2),'20'+y.zfill(2) if len(y)==2 else y))

result

10/02/09     10/02/2009
07/22/09     07/22/2009
09-08-2008     09/08/2008
9/9/2008     09/09/2008
11/4/2010     11/04/2010
03-07-2009     03/07/2009
09/01/2010     09/01/2010

Edit 1

And Edit 2 : taking account of the information on '{0:0>2}'.format(day) from JBernardo, I added a 4th solution, that appears to be the fastest

import re
from time import clock
iterat = 100

from datetime import datetime
dates = ['10/02/09', '07/22/09', '09-08-2008', '9/9/2008', '11/4/2010',
         ' 03-07-2009', '09/01/2010']

reobj = re.compile(
r"""\s*  # optional whitespace
(\d+)    # Month
[-/]     # separator
(\d+)    # Day
[-/]     # separator
(?:20)?  # century (optional)
(\d+)    # years (YY)
\s*      # optional whitespace""",
re.VERBOSE)

te = clock()
for i in xrange(iterat):
    ndates = (reobj.sub(r"\1/\2/20\3", date) for date in dates)
    fdates1 = [datetime.strftime(datetime.strptime(date,"%m/%d/%Y"), "%m/%d/%Y")
               for date in ndates]
print "Tim's method   ",clock()-te,'seconds'



regx = re.compile('[-/]')


te = clock()
for i in xrange(iterat):
    ndates = (reobj.match(date).groups() for date in dates)
    fdates2 = ['%s/%s/20%s' % tuple(x.zfill(2) for x in tu) for tu in ndates]
print "mixing solution",clock()-te,'seconds'


te = clock()
for i in xrange(iterat):
    ndates = (regx.split(date.strip()) for date in dates)
    fdates3 = ['/'.join((m.zfill(2),d.zfill(2),('20'+y.zfill(2) if len(y)==2 else y)))
              for m,d,y in ndates]
print "eyquem's method",clock()-te,'seconds'



te = clock()
for i in xrange(iterat):
    fdates4 = ['{:0>2}/{:0>2}/20{}'.format(*reobj.match(date).groups()) for date in dates]
print "Tim + format   ",clock()-te,'seconds'


print fdates1==fdates2==fdates3==fdates4

result

number of iteration's turns : 100
Tim's method    0.295053700959 seconds
mixing solution 0.0459111423379 seconds
eyquem's method 0.0192239516475 seconds
Tim + format    0.0153756971906 seconds 
True

The mixing solution is interesting because it combines the speed of my solution and the ability of the regex of Tim Pietzcker to detect dates in a string.

That’s still more true for the solution combining Tim’s one and the formating with {:0>2}. I cant’ combine {:0>2} with mine because regx.split(date.strip()) produces year with 2 OR 4 digits