bad directive error when converting string to_datetime in python-CodePudding

I've got the following line of code

df['Sent Date'] =  pd.to_datetime(df['Sent Date'], format = '%-m/%-d/%Y %-I:%M:%S %p')

trying to convert these sort of strings to datetime 1/1/2021 2:20:00 PM

I get the following error

'-' is a bad directive in format '%-m/%-d/%Y %-I:%M:%S %p'

Also tried

import datetime
df['Sent Date'] = datetime.strptime(df['Sent Date'], '%-m/%-d/%Y %-I:%M:%S %p')

and got the error

'module 'datetime' has no attribute 'strptime'

From viewing other questions/answers I thought one of these approaches would work ...

CodePudding user response：

The '-' is intended for output only (with strftime):

df['Sent Date'] = pd.to_datetime(df['Sent Date'], format='%m/%d/%Y %I:%M:%S %p')
print(df)

# Output
0   2021-01-01 14:20:00
Name: Sent Date, dtype: datetime64[ns]

Output:

>>> df['Sent Date'].dt.strftime('%-m/%-d/%Y %-I:%M:%S %p')
0    1/1/2021 2:20:00 PM
Name: Sent Date, dtype: object

Setup:

df = pd.DataFrame({'Sent Date': ['1/1/2021  2:20:00 PM']})