Python strftime - date without leading 0?

Question

When using Python strftime, is there a way to remove the first 0 of the date if it's before the 10th, ie. so 01 is 1? Can't find a %thingy for that?

Thanks!

Fears

Answer 1

Actually I had the same problem and I realized that, if you add a hyphen between the % and the letter, you can remove the leading zero.

For example %Y/%-m/%-d:

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime(2023, 1, 2).strftime("%Y/%-m/%-d")
'2023/1/2'

This only works on Unix (Linux, OS X), not Windows (including Cygwin). On Windows, you would use #, e.g. %Y/%#m/%#d.

Goosefish

Doesn't even work for me, gives a ValueError (windows, python 2.6) – Yttriferous

Works for me, linux python2.6! +1s for Ryan and Cory! – Snorkel

It worked for me on OS X, but I'm using the Python 2.7.2 from python.org. – Gunnery

Worked for me, both on OSX and Linux (debian) – Riane

Works in OS X 10.8.5 with Python 2.7.2, but not in Windows 7 Pro 64-bit with Python 2.7.3. – Earthly

Thanks for this great tips.. Worked like charm for Ubuntu 12.4 django-1.5 – Lexie

@moose I asked a question about this :-) here is the answer -> #28894672 – Murdock

I get ValueError: '-' is a bad directive in format '%b %-d, %Y'. OSX, Python 2.7. – Songer

%#d would do the same on Windows – Declension

I get ValueError, using Linux jupyter notebook – Cannery

Doesn't work on alpine, which is linux, be careful since it will generate an empty string without any expectation! – Seychelles

Didn't know about # on Windows! – Pillow

The # does not work on Win 10.0.17134 N/A version 17134 + python 3.6.0 ValueError: '#' is a bad directive in format '%a. %#d %B %Y, %H:%M' – Renayrenckens

Works with Ruby too. – Jagir

@Renayrenckens I encountered the same error in Windows 10 with Python 3.8.1 (ValueError: '#' is a bad directive in format). This error occurred when using strptime (%#d not OK) but not when using strftime (%d OK). In strptime, using %d without # seemed to work fine though even for parsing dates without leading zeroes. – Imperturbation

Now that I knew what I am looking for, I found this explained in the strftime man page. It is a Glibc extension. – Tamtama

This works with embedded Ruby, too. Thank you! – Schulte

Didn't work for me in Win10, giving error as: ValueError: '#' is a bad directive in format '%Y-%#m-%#d %H:%M' – Higinbotham

Hyphen trick only works on Linux. Hash trick only works on Windows. See this answer – Cowlick

Answer 2

We can do this sort of thing with the advent of the format method since python2.6:

>>> import datetime
>>> '{dt.year}/{dt.month}/{dt.day}'.format(dt = datetime.datetime.now())
'2013/4/19'

Though perhaps beyond the scope of the original question, for more interesting formats, you can do stuff like:

>>> '{dt:%A} {dt:%B} {dt.day}, {dt.year}'.format(dt=datetime.datetime.now())
'Wednesday December 3, 2014'

And as of python3.6, this can be expressed as an inline formatted string:

Python 3.6.0a2 (v3.6.0a2:378893423552, Jun 13 2016, 14:44:21) 
[GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import datetime
>>> dt = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> f'{dt:%A} {dt:%B} {dt.day}, {dt.year}'
'Monday August 29, 2016'

Asphaltite

Very nice! Unfortunately doesn't work alone if you want to use textual representation like time.strftime('%A %B %d, %Y'), which yields (now, on English locale) Tuesday October 07, 2014. – Postage

@PekkaKlärck -- Some reason I hadn't noticed your comment until now. It turns out that datetime specifies a very interesting __format__ hook that allows you to write things like that. – Asphaltite

One problem is that '{dt.hour}' uses a 24 hour clock :(. Using the second option still brings you back to using '{%#I}' on Windows and '{%-I}' on Unix. – Garlan

Good point. I never use 12 hour clock representations in code, so I didn't think of that case. – Asphaltite

I'd suggest looking at this additional documentation on the format functionality: pyformat.info – Paries

Answer 3

Some platforms may support width and precision specification between % and the letter (such as 'd' for day of month), according to http://docs.python.org/library/time.html -- but it's definitely a non-portable solution (e.g. doesn't work on my Mac;-). Maybe you can use a string replace (or RE, for really nasty format) after the strftime to remedy that? e.g.:

>>> y
(2009, 5, 7, 17, 17, 17, 3, 127, 1)
>>> time.strftime('%Y %m %d', y)
'2009 05 07'
>>> time.strftime('%Y %m %d', y).replace(' 0', ' ')
'2009 5 7'

Querist

@guneysus what do you mean? It should result in '1 January 2000' – Prevaricator

@Prevaricator The above code checks for a blank space before 0 which in case of "01 January 2000" is not present. – Gusher

Answer 4

Here is the documentation of the modifiers supported by strftime() in the GNU C library. (Like people said before, it might not be portable.) Of interest to you might be:

• %e instead of %d will replace leading zero in day of month with a space

Compare with the Python documentation of strftime() Format Codes. %d is documented:

%d: Day of the month as a zero-padded decimal number. Examples: 01, 02, …, 31

But %e is not documented. Even though it is not documented, it does seem to work for me regardless (running Linux):

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime(2023, 1, 1).strftime("%e")
' 1'

I don't know if it will work on your operating system.

Tenner

%e fails for me on Windows w/ Python 2.6. I'm guessing it's *nix specific. Too bad :( – Yttriferous

This is the cleanest, most general, solution---on a *nix system, at least. This works on OS X. – Eohippus

Like the %-d above, this works in OS X 10.8.5 with Python 2.7.2, but not in Windows 7 Pro 64-bit with Python 2.7.3. – Earthly

This worked for me on Windows 7 SP1 with Python 3.5.1. – Selfseeker

This introduced an extra space instead of the leading zero so if you are looking for an exact match this may not be it. >>> one = datetime.datetime(2019, 5, 1, 23, 28, 48, 175214) >>> one.strftime('%b %e %H') 'May 1 23' >>> eleven = datetime.datetime(2019, 5, 11, 23, 28, 48, 175214) >>> eleven.strftime('%b %e %H') 'May 11 23' – Ileneileo

Works with modern pandas/python – Scarbrough

Works! Combine %e with a .replace(' ','') for a solution. – Ardolino

Answer 5

>>> import datetime
>>> d = datetime.datetime.now()
>>> d.strftime('X%d/X%m/%Y').replace('X0','X').replace('X','')
'5/5/2011'

Sterlingsterlitamak

This works 01 January 2000,Alexs is not works. – Retinol

What's the point of doing .replace('X0','X').replace('X','')? Just do .replace('X0', '') and it'll be good. – Thymus

@MarcoBonelli: Try your suggestion on the string "X12/X12/14" and you will see. – Sterlingsterlitamak

This is hack, but it's a pythonic hack. – Homoio

Answer 6

On Windows, add a '#', as in '%#m/%#d/%Y %#I:%M:%S %p'

For reference: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fe06s4ak.aspx

Amazing

Answer 7

quite late to the party but %-d works on my end.

datetime.now().strftime('%B %-d, %Y') produces something like "November 5, 2014"

cheers :)

Laconia

duplicate of the leading answer? https://mcmap.net/q/80802/-python-strftime-date-without-leading-0 – Sterlingsterlitamak

ValueError: Invalid format string in my Windows system. – Pashto

As stated in the leading answer, using - "only works on Unix (Linux, OS X), not Windows (including Cygwin). On Windows, you would use #" – Warmth

Agreed, does not work on my windows but ok in Linux. Craziness! – Grand

Answer 8

Take a look at - bellow:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> datetime.now().strftime('%d-%b-%Y')
>>> '08-Oct-2011'
>>> datetime.now().strftime('%-d-%b-%Y')
>>> '8-Oct-2011'
>>> today = datetime.date.today()
>>> today.strftime('%d-%b-%Y')
>>> print(today)

Craal

Works perfectly in python 3 – Anabas

This should be the accepted answer. Does what is asked, super simple and easy to remember. Browsing quickly through the docs I was not able to find this information. – Freddyfredek

"This should be the accepted answer". No it should not, as this only works on Linux. – Wordbook

Answer 9

I find the Django template date formatting filter to be quick and easy. It strips out leading zeros. If you don't mind importing the Django module, check it out.

http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins/#date

from django.template.defaultfilters import date as django_date_filter
print django_date_filter(mydate, 'P, D M j, Y')    

Breakaway

Note that if you're like me and you're not building your app in django, you'll need to tell django you don't need to configure it: import django.conf django.conf.settings.configure() – Prowler

Answer 10

simply use replace like this:

(datetime.date.now()).strftime("%Y/%m/%d").replace("/0", "/")

it will output:

'2017/7/21'

Diplocardiac

This unfortunately does not work for dates formatted like 1.4.2021 (1st of April 2021); it could catch the zero in months, but not for the days (using "01.04.2021".replace(".0",".") leads only to 01.4.2021) – Preuss

Answer 11

For %d you can convert to integer using int() then it'll automatically remove leading 0 and becomes integer. You can then convert back to string using str().

Lenwood

OP question was for a solution using a format specifier in a call to strftime, rather than a roll-your-own solution involving str() – Patella

great answer, don't listen to dave hooper – Canker

Answer 12

using, for example, "%-d" is not portable even between different versions of the same OS. A better solution would be to extract the date components individually, and choose between date specific formatting operators and date attribute access for each component.

e = datetime.date(2014, 1, 6)
"{date:%A} {date.day} {date:%B}{date.year}".format(date=e)

Wyatt

This is the perfect answer, it will work on Windows as well as Linux. – Juju

Answer 13

if we want to fetch only date without leading zero we can

d = date.today()
day = int(d.strftime("%d"))

Lombardo

I find this solution interesting because it works with Windows and Linux. – Downwards

Answer 14

Because Python really just calls the C language strftime(3) function on your platform, it might be that there are format characters you could use to control the leading zero; try man strftime and take a look. But, of course, the result will not be portable, as the Python manual will remind you. :-)

I would try using a new-style datetime object instead, which has attributes like t.year and t.month and t.day, and put those through the normal, high-powered formatting of the % operator, which does support control of leading zeros. See http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html for details. Better yet, use the "".format() operator if your Python has it and be even more modern; it has lots of format options for numbers as well. See: http://docs.python.org/library/string.html#string-formatting.

Inheritrix

Answer 15

Based on Alex's method, this will work for both the start-of-string and after-spaces cases:

re.sub('^0|(?<= )0', '', "01 January 2000 08:00am")

I like this better than .format or %-d because this is cross-platform and allows me to keep using strftime (to get things like "November" and "Monday").

Hocker

Answer 16

Old question, but %l (lower-case L) worked for me in strftime: this may not work for everyone, though, as it's not listed in the Python documentation I found

Murtagh

I am using a Python-based package (weather station software called WeeWX) that only lets me specify percent-sign formatting, like this - not the complicated string-substitution stuff like most of the above answers use. The "%l" worked for me! (on Linux) – Unrefined

@RobCranfill Very glad to hear this came in handy for someone! I remember it solved a rather annoying problem for me at the time – Murtagh

Answer 17

import datetime
now = datetime.datetime.now()
print now.strftime("%b %_d")

Glyceride

This replaces the leading zero with a space, which is not what the OP asked for – Patella

ValueError: '_' is a bad directive in format '%a %b %_d %H:%M:%S %Y' using python 3.5 – Cyclorama

Answer 18

Python 3.6+:

from datetime import date
today = date.today()
text = "Today it is " + today.strftime(f"%A %B {today.day}, %Y")

Licensee

Answer 19

I am late, but a simple list slicing will do the work

today_date = date.today().strftime('%d %b %Y')
if today_date[0] == '0':
    today_date = today_date[1:]

Chemoreceptor

Answer 20

The standard library is good enough for most cases but for a really detailed manipulation with dates you should always look for some specialized third-party library.

Using Arrow:

>>> import arrow
>>> arrow.utcnow().format('dddd, D. M. YYYY')
'Friday, 6. 5. 2022'

Look at the full list of supported tokens.

Akilahakili

Answer 21

A little bit tricky but works for me

ex. from 2021-02-01T00:00:00.000Z to 2021-02-1

from datetime import datetime

dateObj = datetime.strptime('2021-02-01T00:00:00.000Z','%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S.%fZ')
dateObj.strftime('%Y-%m-{}').format(dateObj.day)

Mania

Answer 22

An amateur approach to remove '0' prefix for Day & Month, by casting to 'int'

dt = "08/01/2023"
dtArr = d.split("/")
print(str(int(x[0]))+'/'+str(int(x[1]))+'/'+str(int(x[2])))

Muntin