Python Strptime() and timezones?

Question

Hi,
I have a CSV dumpfile from a Blackberry IPD backup, created using IPDDump. The date/time strings in here look something like this (where EST is an Australian time-zone):

Tue Jun 22 07:46:22 EST 2010

I need to be able to parse this date in Python. At first, I tried to use the strptime() function from datettime.

>>> datetime.datetime.strptime('Tue Jun 22 12:10:20 2010 EST', '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y %Z')

However, for some reason, the datetime object that comes back doesn't seem to have any tzinfo associated with it.

I did read on this page that apparently datetime.strptime silently discards tzinfo, however, I checked the documentation, and I can't find anything to that effect documented here.

I have been able to get the date parsed using a third-party Python library, dateutil, however I'm still curious as to how I was using the in-built strptime() incorrectly? Is there any way to get strptime() to play nicely with timezones?

Cheers,
Victor

Answer 1

The documentation says """Return a datetime corresponding to date_string, parsed according to format. This is equivalent to datetime(*(time.strptime(date_string, format)[0:6])).""" See that [0:6]? That gets you (year,month,day,hour,minute,second). Nothing else. No mention of timezones.

Interestingly, [Win XP SP2, Python 2.6, 2.7] passing your example to time.strptime doesn't work but if you strip off the " %Z" and the " EST" it does work. Also using "UTC" or "GMT" instead of "EST" works. "PST" and "MEZ" don't work. Puzzling.