datetime from string in Python, best-guessing string format

Question

The function to get a datetime from a string, datetime.strptime(date_string, format) requires a string format as the second argument. Is there a way to build a

Answer 1

Can get away with a simple function if only checking against dates.

def get_date(s_date):
    date_patterns = ["%d-%m-%Y", "%Y-%m-%d"]

    for pattern in date_patterns:
        try:
            return datetime.datetime.strptime(s_date, pattern).date()
        except:
            pass

    print "Date is not in expected format: %s" %(s_date)
    sys.exit(0)