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

import re
from datetime import datetime
def proc_date(x):
    return re.sub(r"\b([0123]?[0-9])(st|th|nd|rd)\b",r"\1",x)

>>> x='Thu 2nd May 2013 19:00'
>>> proc_date(x)
'Thu 2 May 2013 19:00'
>>> datetime.strptime(proc_date(x), '%a %d %B %Y %H:%M')
datetime.datetime(2013, 5, 2, 19, 0)