Question

I need to use a datetime.strptime on the text which looks like follows.

‘Some Random text of undetermined length Jan 28, 1986’

how do i do this?

Answer 1

Using the ending 3 words, no need for regexps (using the time module):

>>> import time >>> a='Some Random text of undetermined length Jan 28, 1986' >>> datetuple = a.rsplit(' ',3)[-3:] >>> datetuple ['Jan', '28,', '1986'] >>> time.strptime(' '.join(datetuple),'%b %d, %Y') time.struct_time(tm_year=1986, tm_mon=1, tm_mday=28, tm_hour=0, tm_min=0, tm_sec=0, tm_wday=1, tm_yday=28, tm_isdst=-1) >>>  

Using the datetime module:

>>> from datetime import datetime >>> datetime.strptime(' '.join(datetuple), '%b %d, %Y') datetime.datetime(1986, 1, 28, 0, 0) >>>