How to get the datetime from a string containing '2nd' for the date in Python?

Question

I\'ve got a couple strings from which I want to get the datetime. They are formatted like this:

Thu 2nd May 2013 19:00

I know almost how I

Answer 1

You can preparse the original string to adjust the day to be suitable for your strptime, eg:

from datetime import datetime
import re

s = 'Thu 2nd May 2013 19:00'
amended = re.sub('\d+(st|nd|rd|th)', lambda m: m.group()[:-2].zfill(2), s)
# Thu 02 May 2013 19:00
dt = datetime.strptime(amended, '%a %d %B %Y %H:%M')
# 2013-05-02 19:00:00