Date formatting using Python

Question

1.00/5 (1 vote)

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I'm writing a program that collects a date, checks if the date matches any of the mentioned date formats. If there's a match 'True' is returned, else, 'False'.

Issue: Why isn't my "any()" working as expected?

What I have tried:

Here's my code --->

Python

from datetime import datetime

x = "24-3-2012"
date_formats = ['%d/%m/%Y','%m/%d/%Y','%Y/%m/%d','%d-%m-%Y','%m-%d-%Y', '%Y-%m-%d']
for i in date_formats:
    try:
        d = datetime.strptime(x, i)
        print(any(x))
        
    except ValueError:
        print("False")

Expected output --> True

Observed output --> False False False True False False

Posted 17-Aug-22 0:11am

Apoorva 2022

Updated 17-Aug-22 0:43am

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Comments

Richard Deeming 17-Aug-22 6:25am

Your function clearly doesn't behave in the way you describe. Apart from anything else, it will print "False" for every format that the input doesn't match, even if it does match one of the other formats.

And any(x) isn't doing what you think it's doing either:
Built-in Functions — Python 3.10.6 documentation[^]

Apoorva 2022 17-Aug-22 6:39am

I've mentioned the output I received.
For instance - x = "2019-8-30" gives
False
False
False
False
False
True

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Richard MacCutchan · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-17T00:43:00

You need to print the details when you find a valid format, and also break out of the loop. If the loop completes without finding one, the you can print the exception message. So your code should be: