How to parse date time string with timezone abbreviated name in Python

Question

\\n votefavoriI'm trying to parse timestamp strings like "Sat, 11/01/09 8:00PM EST" in Python, but I'm having trouble finding a solution that will handle the abbreviated timezone.

I'm using dateutil's parse() function, but it doesn't parse the timezone. Is there an easy way to do this?

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Answer 1

The parse() function in dateutil can't handle time zones. The thing I've been using is the %Z formatter and the time.strptime() function. I have no idea how it deals with the ambiguity in time zones, but it seems to tell the difference between CDT and CST, which is all I needed.

Background: I store backup images in directories whose names are timestamps using local time, since I don't have GMT clocks handy at home. So I use time.strptime(d, r"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S_%Z") to parse the directory names back into an actual time for age analysis.