Question

I have a huge list of datetime strings like the following

["Jun 1 2005 1:33PM", "Aug 28 1999 12:00AM"] 

How do I convert them into datetime objects?

Answer 1

datetime.strptime parses an input string in the user-specified format into a timezone-naive datetime object:

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> datetime.strptime('Jun 1 2005  1:33PM', '%b %d %Y %I:%M%p') datetime.datetime(2005, 6, 1, 13, 33) 

To obtain a date object using an existing datetime object, convert it using .date():

>>> datetime.strptime('Jun 1 2005', '%b %d %Y').date() date(2005, 6, 1) 

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Links:

• strptime docs: Python 2, Python 3

• strptime/strftime format string docs: Python 2, Python 3

• strftime.org format string cheatsheet

Notes:

• strptime = "string parse time"
• strftime = "string format time"