strptime() does not convert string to datetime object in Python 3.6

Question

I am getting an exception when I run the following code which I can not explain:

import datetime
datetime.datetime.strptime("2018-04-02", format = "%Y-%m-%d")

TypeError: strptime() takes no keyword arguments

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2018-04-02 12:43:20Z

7

Remove the format = keyword, the second argument is positional only:

>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.datetime.strptime("2018-04-02", "%Y-%m-%d")
datetime.datetime(2018, 4, 2, 0, 0)

answered Apr 2, 2018 at 12:43

Martijn Pieters

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2 Comments

Imad Over a year ago

Why not? How do they make this distinction? I look at the function signature and I find : def strptime(cls, date_string, format): How come I can't name the keyword arguments here?

Martijn Pieters Over a year ago

@Aetos: because the method is defined in C code, and most native functions and methods are positional-only. Generally speaking, for code written in C, supporting arguments both as positional and as keyword arguments carries a performance penalty so such support is rarely added.

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