How can I parse multiple (unknown) date formats in python?

Question

I have a bunch of excel documents I am extracting dates from. I am trying to convert these to a standard format so I can put them in a database. Is there a function I can th

Answer 1

If you don't want to install a third-party module like dateutil:

import re
from datetime import datetime
dates = ['10/02/09', '07/22/09', '09-08-2008', '9/9/2008', '11/4/2010', ' 03-07-2009', '09/01/2010']
reobj = re.compile(
    r"""\s*  # optional whitespace
    (\d+)    # Month
    [-/]     # separator
    (\d+)    # Day
    [-/]     # separator
    (?:20)?  # century (optional)
    (\d+)    # years (YY)
    \s*      # optional whitespace""", 
    re.VERBOSE)
ndates = [reobj.sub(r"\1/\2/20\3", date) for date in dates]
fdates = [datetime.strftime(datetime.strptime(date,"%m/%d/%Y"), "%m/%d/%Y")
          for date in ndates]

Result:

['10/02/2009', '07/22/2009', '09/08/2008', '09/09/2008', '11/04/2010', '03/07/2009', '09/01/2010']