How to print a date in a regular format?

Question

This is my code:

import datetime
today = datetime.date.today()
print(today)

This prints: 2008-11-22 which is exactly what I wa

Answer 1

The date, datetime, and time objects all support a strftime(format) method, to create a string representing the time under the control of an explicit format string.

Here is a list of the format codes with their directive and meaning.

    %a  Locale’s abbreviated weekday name.
    %A  Locale’s full weekday name.      
    %b  Locale’s abbreviated month name.     
    %B  Locale’s full month name.
    %c  Locale’s appropriate date and time representation.   
    %d  Day of the month as a decimal number [01,31].    
    %f  Microsecond as a decimal number [0,999999], zero-padded on the left
    %H  Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number [00,23].    
    %I  Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number [01,12].    
    %j  Day of the year as a decimal number [001,366].   
    %m  Month as a decimal number [01,12].   
    %M  Minute as a decimal number [00,59].      
    %p  Locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM.
    %S  Second as a decimal number [00,61].
    %U  Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week)
    %w  Weekday as a decimal number [0(Sunday),6].   
    %W  Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week)
    %x  Locale’s appropriate date representation.    
    %X  Locale’s appropriate time representation.    
    %y  Year without century as a decimal number [00,99].    
    %Y  Year with century as a decimal number.   
    %z  UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM.
    %Z  Time zone name (empty string if the object is naive).    
    %%  A literal '%' character.

This is what we can do with the datetime and time modules in Python

    import time
    import datetime

    print "Time in seconds since the epoch: %s" %time.time()
    print "Current date and time: ", datetime.datetime.now()
    print "Or like this: ", datetime.datetime.now().strftime("%y-%m-%d-%H-%M")


    print "Current year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%Y")
    print "Month of year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%B")
    print "Week number of the year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%W")
    print "Weekday of the week: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%w")
    print "Day of year: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%j")
    print "Day of the month : ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%d")
    print "Day of week: ", datetime.date.today().strftime("%A")

That will print out something like this:

    Time in seconds since the epoch:    1349271346.46
    Current date and time:              2012-10-03 15:35:46.461491
    Or like this:                       12-10-03-15-35
    Current year:                       2012
    Month of year:                      October
    Week number of the year:            40
    Weekday of the week:                3
    Day of year:                        277
    Day of the month :                  03
    Day of week:                        Wednesday