Parsing time string in Python
datetime, datetime-parsing, python
Solution
`datetime.datetime.strptime` has problems with timezone parsing. Have a look at the `dateutil` package:
>>> from dateutil import parser
>>> parser.parse("Tue May 08 15:14:45 +0800 2012")
datetime.datetime(2012, 5, 8, 15, 14, 45, tzinfo=tzoffset(None, 28800))
Problem
I have a date time string that I don't know how to parse it in Python. The string is like this: ``` Tue May 08 15:14:45 +0800 2012 ``` I tried ``` datetime.strptime("Tue May 08 15:14:45 +0800 2012","%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %z %Y") ``` but Python raises ``` 'z' is a bad directive in format '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %z %Y' ``` According to Python doc: %z UTC offset in the form +HHMM or -HHMM (empty string if the the object is naive). What is the right format to parse this time string?