Normalize different date data into single format in Python -

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• parsing date can in several formats in python 4 answers

i analyzing dateset contains many different date types

12/31/1991 december 10, 1980 september 25, 1970 2005-11-14 december 1990 october 12, 2005 1993-06-26 

is there way normalize date data single format 'yyyy-mm-dd' ? familiar datetime package in python, what's best way approach problem can handle different date types.

if okay using library, can use dateutil library (i believe comes installed python 3 +) , dateutil.parser.parse function, , parse dates datetime objects, , use datetime.datetime.strftime() parse them strings in format - 'yyyy-mm-dd' . example -

>>> s = """12/31/1991 ... december 10, 1980 ... september 25, 1970 ... 2005-11-14 ... december 1990 ... october 12, 2005 ... 1993-06-26"""  >>> dateutil import parser >>> in s.splitlines(): ...     d = parser.parse(i) ...     print(d.strftime("%y-%m-%d")) ... 1991-12-31 1980-12-10 1970-09-25 2005-11-14 1990-12-10 2005-10-12 1993-06-26 

a thing note, dateutil.parser.parse use current datetime make parts of datetime if missing in string (as can seen above in parsing of 'december 1990' , got parsed - 1990-12-10 10 current date) .