strptime format string nasty default

[Javier Novoa C.]

Hi,

I am using time.strptime method as follows:

I receive an input string, representing some date in the following
format:

%d%m%Y

However, the day part may be a single digit or two, depending on
magnitude.

For example:

'10052012' will be parsed as day 10, month 5, year 2012

Again:

'8052012' will be parsed as day 8, month 5, year 2012

What happens when day is 1 or 2?

'1052012' will be parsed as day 10, month 5, year 2012 !!!!

That's not the expected behaviour! Not for me at least. I mean, in my
case, month will always be a 2 digit string, so there's no ambiguity
problem by pretending that... say '1052012' is correctly parsed.

Is there a way out of here? I know I can pre-parse the string and
append a '0' to it when lenght == 7, but I think that a better way
would be if strptime allowed me to define my format in a better
way... To say that the month is the optional one-two digit part is
just a default, isn't it? Why can't I specify that the day part is the
one with one-or-two digits on the input string...?

Or is there a way out that I don't know yet?

-- 
Javier Novoa C.

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