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From: AlienBaby on 6 Jul 2010 05:55
Hi,

I'm using datetime.strptime(string,format) to convert dates parsed
from a file into datetime objects.

However, the files come from various places around the world, and
strptime fails when non-english month names are used.

strptime says it converts month names using the current locales
version of the name. I've looked into the locale module but can't see
how I would setup.change a locales date/time representations, I can
only see categories related to decimal number / currency
representations.

Can anyone show how I could change the locale such that strptime could
parse a date string that used say, German month names?

Thankyou
From: AlienBaby on 6 Jul 2010 06:03
On 6 July, 10:55, AlienBaby <matt.j.war...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm using datetime.strptime(string,format) to convert dates parsed
> from a file into datetime objects.
>
> However, the files come from various places around the world, and
> strptime fails when non-english month names are used.
>
> strptime says it converts month names using the current locales
> version of the name.  I've looked into the locale module but can't see
> how I would setup.change a locales date/time representations, I can
> only see categories related to decimal number / currency
> representations.
>
> Can anyone show how I could change the locale such that strptime could
> parse a date string that used say, German month names?
>
> Thankyou

I just solved this I believe. I didnt spot LC_ALL or LC_TIME
previously.
From: AlienBaby on 6 Jul 2010 06:21
I'm still having a bit of trouble, for example trying to set the
locale to Denmark


locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, locale.normalize('da_DK'))

returns with

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, locale.normalize('da_DK'))
File "C:\Python26\lib\locale.py", line 494, in setlocale
return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting


Though, from the docs I understand normalize should return a local
formatted for use with setlocale?
From: Antoine Pitrou on 6 Jul 2010 06:38
On Tue, 6 Jul 2010 03:21:21 -0700 (PDT)
AlienBaby <matt.j.warren(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm still having a bit of trouble, for example trying to set the
> locale to Denmark
>
>
> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, locale.normalize('da_DK'))
>
> returns with
>
> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, locale.normalize('da_DK'))
> File "C:\Python26\lib\locale.py", line 494, in setlocale
> return _setlocale(category, locale)
> locale.Error: unsupported locale setting
>
>
> Though, from the docs I understand normalize should return a local
> formatted for use with setlocale?

I think normalize works ok, but setlocale then fails (*). You can only
use a locale if it's installed on the computer. That, and other issues
(such as the fact that the locale setting is process-wide and can
interfere with other parts of your program, or third-party libraries;
or the fact that a given locale can have differences depending on the
vendor) make the locale mechanism very fragile and annoying.

If you want to do this seriously, I suggest you instead take a look at
third-party libraries such as Babel:
http://babel.edgewall.org/


(*):

>>> import locale
>>> locale.normalize('da_DK')
'da_DK.ISO8859-1'
>>> locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, locale.normalize('da_DK'))
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/locale.py", line 513, in setlocale
return _setlocale(category, locale)
locale.Error: unsupported locale setting


From: python on 6 Jul 2010 11:54
Antoine,

> If you want to do this seriously, I suggest you instead take a look at third-party libraries such as Babel: http://babel.edgewall.org/

Not the OP, but has Babel implemented parsing support? Last time I
looked, Babel did a great job with locale specific formatting, but
locale specific formatting was still incomplete.

Malcolm
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