Why is datetime.strptime not working in this simple example?

python string datetime type-conversion datetime-format
Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE picture Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE · Aug 22, 2012 · Viewed 182k times · Source

I'm using strptime to convert a date string into a datetime. According to the linked page, formatting like this should work:

>>> # Using datetime.strptime()
>>> dt = datetime.strptime("21/11/06 16:30", "%d/%m/%y %H:%M")

My code is:

import datetime
dtDate = datetime.strptime(sDate,"%m/%d/%Y")

where sDate = "07/27/2012". (I understand, from the same page, that %Y is "Year with century as a decimal number.")

I have tried putting the actual value of sDate into the code:

dtDate = datetime.strptime("07/27/2012","%m/%d/%Y")

but this does not work. The error I get is:

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'strptime'

What am I doing wrong?

Answer

ecatmur picture ecatmur · Aug 22, 2012

You should be using datetime.datetime.strptime. Note that very old versions of Python (2.4 and older) don't have datetime.datetime.strptime; use time.strptime in that case.

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