1

Wanted an easy way to extract year month and day from a string. Using Python 3.1.2

Tried this:

processdate = "20100818"
print(processdate[0:4])
print(processdate[4:2])
print(processdate[6:2])

Results in:

...2010
...
...

Reread all the string docs, did some searching, can't figure out why it'd be doing this. I'm sure this is a no brainer that I'm missing somehow, I've just banged my head on this enough today.

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
6

With a slice of [4:2], you're telling Python to start at character index 4 and stop at character index 2. Since 4 > 2, you are already past where you should stop when you start, so the slice is empty.

Did you want the fourth and fifth characters? Then you want [4:6] instead.

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4 Comments

Ah somewhere along the way I got the impression that 4:2 was start char 4 length of 2 not start char 4 to char 2 Like I said, it was a bonehead thing I just missed along the way. Thanks.
Please mark this as the correct answer to give credit to @kindall! :)
Or mark mine as correct because I actually fixed the code - and answered first.
"answered first" is never a reason to mark one item a solution over another; the person who answered second probably put more thought into the answer.
6

The best way to do this is with strptime!

print( strptime( ..., "%Y%m%d" ) )
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1 Comment

Oh lookie there. This could be useful. TY
2 
processdate = "20100818" 
print(processdate[0:4]) # year
print(processdate[4:6]) # month
print(processdate[6:8]) # date
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