Cannot use datetime.datetime.strptime, got an AttributeError instead

Question

I have two strings in python.

time_array1='09-JAN-2014 01:19'
time_array2='09-JAN-2014 01:01'

I need to find the time difference and I am doing:

print time_array1
print time_array2
FMT = '%d-%m-%Y %H:%M'
datetime_object1= datetime.datetime.strptime(time_array1, FMT)
print datetime_object1
datetime_object2= datetime.datetime.strptime(time_array2, FMT)
print datetime_object2
diff=datetime_object1 - datetime_object2
print diff

but I am getting the following error:

    datetime_object1= datetime.datetime.strptime(time_array1, FMT)
AttributeError: type object 'datetime.datetime' has no attribute 'strptime'

Is there any alternative way through which I can do it. It seems the python library doesn't have strptime attribute.

Answer 1

The strptime method was added in python 2.5; if you are using an older version use the following code instead:

import datetime, time
datetime_object1 = datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(time_array1, FMT)[:6])

Your months are abbreviations, use the %b to parse that instead of %m.

Demo:

>>> import datetime, time
>>> time_array1='09-JAN-2014 01:19'
>>> time_array2='09-JAN-2014 01:01'
>>> FMT = '%d-%b-%Y %H:%M'
>>> datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(time_array1, FMT)[:6])
datetime.datetime(2014, 1, 9, 1, 19)
>>> datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(time_array2, FMT)[:6])
datetime.datetime(2014, 1, 9, 1, 1)