Python, strptime is skipping zeros in the millisecond section

Question

I want to extract the timestamp from a string, but the milliseconds part is not being read properly

datetime.strptime('20130629110924095','%Y%m%d%H%M%S%f')

produces the following output

datetime.datetime(2013, 6, 29, 11, 9, 24, 95000)

instead of

datetime.datetime(2013, 6, 29, 11, 9, 24, 95)

to be clear: 95 milliseconds

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Microseconds consist of six digits. 95 milliseconds = 95000 microseconds. So to get datetime with 95 milliseconds like datetime.datetime(2013, 6, 29, 11, 9, 24, 95000) write:

datetime.strptime('20130629110924095000','%Y%m%d%H%M%S%f')

Answer 2

The documentation says:

%f is an extension to the set of format characters in the C standard (but implemented separately in datetime objects, and therefore always available). When used with the strptime() method, the %f directive accepts from one to six digits and zero pads on the right.

So the result you get is expected behaviour, your '095' is padded to '095000'.

Answer 3

95000 is in microseconds that is equivalent to 95 milliseconds i.e., the input ('095') is already correct if you want to get 95 milliseconds.

Here's the same input with some additional formatting for readability:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.strptime('2013-06-29 11:09:24.095','%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f')
datetime.datetime(2013, 6, 29, 11, 9, 24, 95000)

A millisecond is 0.001 seconds and therefore 95 milliseconds is 0.095 seconds that is why 095 is the correct input for %f that parses the fractional part of a second.