How to convert `ctime` to `datetime` in Python?

Question

import time
t = time.ctime()

For me at the moment, t is \'Sat Apr 21 11:58:02 2012\'. I have more data like this.

Answer 1

You should use strptime: this function parses a string representing a time according to a format. The return value is a struct_time.

The format parameter defaults to %a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y which matches the formatting returned by ctime().

So in your case just try the following line, since the default format is the one from ctime:

import datetime
import time

datetime.datetime.strptime(time.ctime(), "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y")

Returns: datetime.datetime(2012, 4, 21, 4, 22, 00)