[Tutor] "ImportError: _strptime not supported"

[eryksun]

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 6:19 PM,  <akleider at sonic.net> wrote:
>
> from datetime import datetime
> start_date = datetime(year=2012, month=11, day=3)
> print(start_date)
>
> datestring = '10/11/2012'
> experiment_date = datetime.strftime(datestring, '%d/%m/%Y')
> print(experiment_date)
>
> if experiment_date > start_date:
>     print("Experiment_date comes after start_date.")
> else:
>     print("Expriment_date does not come after start_date.")
>
> Does not complete because of:
>
> "ImportError: _strptime not supported"

That error is surely some quirk of pythontutor.com.

datetime.strftime calls time.strftime. On the other hand,
datetime.strptime does import _strptime:

http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/70274d53c1dd/Modules/datetimemodule.c#l3937

Did you actually use datetime.strptime?

Normally you'd use strftime as method call on a datetime object:

    >>> from datetime import datetime
    >>> datestring = '10/11/2012'

    >>> dt = datetime.strptime(datestring, '%d/%m/%Y')
    >>> dt
    datetime.datetime(2012, 11, 10, 0, 0)

    >>> dt.strftime('%d/%m/%Y')
    '10/11/2012'