Parsing non-zero padded timestamps in Python

Question

I want to get datetimes from timestamps like the following :3/1/2014 9:55 with datetime.strptime, or something equivalent.

The month, day o

Answer 1

The non-pattern way is use dateutil.parse module, it lets to parse the common date formats, even if you don't know what it is using currently
Ex:

>>> import dateutil.parser
>>> 
>>> utc_time     = '2014-08-13T00:00:00'
>>> verbose_time = '13-Aug-2014'
>>> some_locale  = '3/1/2014 9:55'
>>> dateutil.parser.parse(utc_time)
datetime.datetime(2014, 8, 13, 0, 0)
>>> dateutil.parser.parse(verbose_time)
datetime.datetime(2014, 8, 13, 0, 0)
>>> dateutil.parser.parse(some_locale)
datetime.datetime(2014, 3, 1, 9, 55)