What language has the easiest and most robust date parsing

language-agnostic

I know java has the SimpleDateFormat which seems fairly powerful, but you need to know the format ahead of time to use it correctly.
TCL's clock scan function seems to be the easiest and most powerful I've seen.

e.g. clock scan "1/08/2009 12:33:01 AM" will work just as well as
clock scan "8-Jan-2009 12:33:01"

EDIT: Okay, removing the idea that it has to be a built-in feature. Are Perl and Python the best available?

Best Answer

Python doesn't have a library built in, but the excellent dateutil library provides a parse() method that's pretty accommodating.

From simple (assuming today is 9/25):

>>> parse("Thu Sep 25 2003")
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("Sep 25 2003")
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("Sep 2003", default=DEFAULT)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("Sep", default=DEFAULT)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

>>> parse("2003", default=DEFAULT)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 25, 0, 0)

To ambigous:

>>> parse("10-09-2003")
datetime.datetime(2003, 10, 9, 0, 0)

>>> parse("10-09-2003", dayfirst=True)
datetime.datetime(2003, 9, 10, 0, 0)

>>> parse("10-09-03")
datetime.datetime(2003, 10, 9, 0, 0)

>>> parse("10-09-03", yearfirst=True)
datetime.datetime(2010, 9, 3, 0, 0)

To all over the board:

>>> parse("Wed, July 10, '96")
datetime.datetime(1996, 7, 10, 0, 0)

>>> parse("1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 PDT", ignoretz=True)
datetime.datetime(1996, 7, 10, 15, 8, 56)

>>> parse("Tuesday, April 12, 1952 AD 3:30:42pm PST", ignoretz=True)
datetime.datetime(1952, 4, 12, 15, 30, 42)

>>> parse("November 5, 1994, 8:15:30 am EST", ignoretz=True)
datetime.datetime(1994, 11, 5, 8, 15, 30)

>>> parse("3rd of May 2001")
datetime.datetime(2001, 5, 3, 0, 0)

>>> parse("5:50 A.M. on June 13, 1990")
datetime.datetime(1990, 6, 13, 5, 50)

Take a look at the documentation for it here:

http://labix.org/python-dateutil#head-c0e81a473b647dfa787dc11e8c69557ec2c3ecd2

Related Topic