Is there a Python module to parse a date like the 'date' command in Linux?

[Chris Green]

I'm converting a bash script to python as it has become rather clumsy
in bash.

However I have hit a problem with converting dates, the bash script
has:-

dat=$(date --date "$1" +"%Y/%m/%d")

and this will accept almost anything reasonably sensible that can be
interpreted as a date, in particular it accepts things like "tomorrow",
"yesterday" and "next thursday".

Is there anything similar in Python or would I be better off simply
using os.system() to run date from the python program?

--
Chris Green
·

[Mats Wichmann]

in the standard library, datetime

as an addon module, dateutil (install as python-dateutil)

Don't know if either are exactly what you want, but do take a look.

[Tim Williams]

On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 12:41 PM Mats Wichmann <ma...@wichmann.us> wrote:

> On 5/20/23 13:53, Chris Green wrote:

> in the standard library, datetime
>
> as an addon module, dateutil (install as python-dateutil)
>
> Don't know if either are exactly what you want, but do take a look.
>

> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list


In particular,check out dateutil.parser.
parser — dateutil 2.8.2 documentation
<https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/parser.html>

parser
<https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/parser.html#module-dateutil.parser>

This module offers a generic date/time string parser which is able to parse
most known formats to represent a date and/or time.

This module attempts to be forgiving with regards to unlikely input
formats, returning a datetime object even for dates which are ambiguous. If
an element of a date/time stamp is omitted, the following rules are applied:

[Mike Dewhirst]

On 21/05/2023 5:53 am, Chris Green wrote:
> I'm converting a bash script to python as it has become rather clumsy
> in bash.

What is the use case?

> However I have hit a problem with converting dates, the bash script
> has:-
>
> dat=$(date --date "$1" +"%Y/%m/%d")
>
> and this will accept almost anything reasonably sensible that can be
> interpreted as a date, in particular it accepts things like "tomorrow",
> "yesterday" and "next thursday".
>
> Is there anything similar in Python or would I be better off simply
> using os.system() to run date from the python program?
>


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[Chris Green]

Mike Dewhirst <mi...@dewhirst.com.au> wrote:
> [-- multipart/mixed, encoding 7bit, 22 lines --]
>
> [-- text/plain, encoding base64, charset: UTF-8, 16 lines --]

>
> On 21/05/2023 5:53 am, Chris Green wrote:
> > I'm converting a bash script to python as it has become rather clumsy
> > in bash.
>
> What is the use case?
>

A script I use to create diary entries, so it's very handy to be able
to give the date as 'yesterday' or 'friday'.

--
Chris Green
·

[Alex Pinkney]

> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list



Hi, you may find dateparser useful:
https://dateparser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[Mike Dewhirst]

OK - I thought maybe baklabel might suit, but that delivers a day-name
(backup filename prefix) for today or a given date

[Mike Dewhirst]

On 24/05/2023 6:00 pm, Mike Dewhirst wrote:
> On 23/05/2023 7:16 pm, Chris Green wrote:

> OK - I thought maybe baklabel might suit, but that delivers a day-name
> (backup filename prefix) for today or a given date

I have just refreshed baklabel on PyPI and upped it from my local svn
server to github [1]

The changes include resolving ambiguous dates across locales eg USA vs
Australia 5/6/2023 being detected as May in USA and June in Australia on
the assumption that the user knows what is required.

[1] https://github.com/mdewhirst/baklabel