Some platforms may support width and precision specification between %
and the letter (such as 'd' for day of month), according to http://docs.python.org/library/time.html -- but it's definitely a non-portable solution (e.g. doesn't work on my Mac;-). Maybe you can use a string replace (or RE, for really nasty format) after the strftime
to remedy that? e.g.:
>>> y
(2009, 5, 7, 17, 17, 17, 3, 127, 1)
>>> time.strftime('%Y %m %d', y)
'2009 05 07'
>>> time.strftime('%Y %m %d', y).replace(' 0', ' ')
'2009 5 7'