How to print a date in a regular format

Question

This is my code   import datetime today   datetime date today   print today    This prints  2008-11-22 which is exactly what I want   But  I have a list I m appending this to and then suddenly everything goes  wonky   Here is the code   import datetime mylist      today   datetime date today   mylist append today  print mylist    This prints the following     datetime date 2008  11  22     How can I get just a simple date like 2008-11-22

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import datetime print datetime datetime now   strftime  quot  Y- m- d  H  M quot    Edit  After Cees  suggestion  I have started using time as well  import time print time strftime  quot  Y- m- d  H  M quot

User · Answer

Use date strftime  The formatting arguments are described in the documentation   This one is what you wanted   some date strftime   Y- m- d     This one takes Locale into account   do this   some date strftime   c

User · Answer

Use date strftime  The formatting arguments are described in the documentation   This one is what you wanted   some date strftime   Y- m- d     This one takes Locale into account   do this   some date strftime   c

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You can do   mylist append str today

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Considering the fact you asked for something simple to do what you wanted  you could just   import datetime str datetime date today

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A quick disclaimer for my answer - I ve only been learning Python for about 2 weeks  so I am by no means an expert  therefore  my explanation may not be the best and I may use incorrect terminology  Anyway  here it goes   I noticed in your code that when you declared your variable today   datetime date today   you chose to name your variable with the name of a built-in function    When your next line of code mylist append today  appended your list  it appended the entire string datetime date today    which you had previously set as the value of your today variable  rather than just appending today      A simple solution  albeit maybe not one most coders would use when working with the datetime module  is to change the name of your variable   Here s what I tried    import datetime mylist      present   datetime date today   mylist append present  print present   and it prints yyyy-mm-dd

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You can do   mylist append str today

User · Answer

You may want to append it as a string   import datetime  mylist       today   str datetime date today    mylist append today   print mylist

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For those wanting locale-based date and not including time  use    gt  gt  gt  some date strftime   x   07 11 2019

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I don t fully understand but  can use pandas for getting times in right format    gt  gt  gt  import pandas as pd  gt  gt  gt  pd to datetime  now   Timestamp  2018-10-07 06 03 30    gt  gt  gt  print pd to datetime  now    2018-10-07 06 03 47  gt  gt  gt  pd to datetime  now   date   datetime date 2018  10  7   gt  gt  gt  print pd to datetime  now   date    2018-10-07  gt  gt  gt     And    gt  gt  gt  l     gt  gt  gt  l append pd to datetime  now   date     gt  gt  gt  l  datetime date 2018  10  7    gt  gt  gt  map str l   lt map object at 0x0000005F67CCDF98 gt   gt  gt  gt  list map str l     2018-10-07     But it s storing strings but easy to convert    gt  gt  gt  l list map str l    gt  gt  gt  list map pd to datetime l    Timestamp  2018-10-07 00 00 00

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You can use easy date to make it easy   import date converter my date   date converter date to string today    Y- m- d

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import datetime print datetime datetime now   strftime  quot  Y- m- d  H  M quot    Edit  After Cees  suggestion  I have started using time as well  import time print time strftime  quot  Y- m- d  H  M quot

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This is shorter    gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  time strftime   Y- m- d  H  M    2013-11-19 09 38

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This is shorter    gt  gt  gt  import time  gt  gt  gt  time strftime   Y- m- d  H  M    2013-11-19 09 38

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You can do   mylist append str today

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The WHY  dates are objects In Python  dates are objects  Therefore  when you manipulate them  you manipulate objects  not strings or timestamps  Any object in Python has TWO string representations   The regular representation that is used by print can be get using the str   function  It is most of the time the most common human readable format and is used to ease display  So str datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  2008-11-22 19 53 42    The alternative representation that is used to represent the object nature  as a data   It can be get using the repr   function and is handy to know what kind of data your manipulating while you are developing or debugging  repr datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42      What happened is that when you have printed the date using print  it used str   so you could see a nice date string  But when you have printed mylist  you have printed a list of objects and Python tried to represent the set of data  using repr    The How  what do you want to do with that  Well  when you manipulate dates  keep using the date objects all long the way  They got thousand of useful methods and most of the Python API expect dates to be objects  When you want to display them  just use str    In Python  the good practice is to explicitly cast everything  So just when it s time to print  get a string representation of your date using str date   One last thing  When you tried to print the dates  you printed mylist  If you want to print a date  you must print the date objects  not their container  the list   E G  you want to print all the date in a list   for date in mylist       print str date   Note that in that specific case  you can even omit str   because print will use it for you  But it should not become a habit  -  Practical case  using your code import datetime mylist      today   datetime date today   mylist append today  print mylist 0    print the date object  not the container  -  2008-11-22    It s better to always use str   because    print  quot This is a new day    quot   mylist 0    will work  gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  print  quot This is a new day    quot    mylist 0    will crash  gt  gt  gt  cannot concatenate  str  and  datetime date  objects  print  quot This is a new day    quot    str mylist 0     gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  Advanced date formatting Dates have a default representation  but you may want to print them in a specific format  In that case  you can get a custom string representation using the strftime   method  strftime   expects a string pattern explaining how you want to format your date  E G   print today strftime  We are the  d   b  Y    gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   All the letter after a  quot   quot  represent a format for something    d is the day number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   m is the month number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   b is the month abbreviation  3 letters   B is the month name in full  letters   y is the year number abbreviated  last 2 digits   Y is the year number full  4 digits   etc  Have a look at the official documentation  or McCutchen s quick reference you can t know them all  Since PEP3101  every object can have its own format used automatically by the method format of any string  In the case of the datetime  the format is the same used in strftime  So you can do the same as above like this  print  quot We are the    d   b  Y  quot  format today   gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   The advantage of this form is that you can also convert other objects at the same time  With the introduction of Formatted string literals  since Python 3 6  2016-12-23  this can be written as import datetime f quot  datetime datetime now    Y- m- d  quot   gt  gt  gt   2017-06-15   Localization Dates can automatically adapt to the local language and culture if you use them the right way  but it s a bit complicated  Maybe for another question on SO Stack Overflow   -

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I hate the idea of importing too many modules for convenience  I would rather work with available module which in this case is datetime rather than calling a new module time    gt  gt  gt  a   datetime datetime 2015  04  01  11  23  22   gt  gt  gt  a strftime   Y- m- d  H  M    2015-04-01 11 23

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You need to convert the date time object to a string   The following code worked for me   import datetime collection      dateTimeString   str datetime date today    collection append dateTimeString  print collection   Let me know if you need any more help

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import datetime import time  months     Unknown   January   Febuary   Marchh   April   May   June   July   August   September   October   November   December   datetimeWrite    time strftime   d- m- Y     date   time strftime   d   month  time strftime   m   choices     01    Jan    02   Feb   03   Mar   04   Apr   05   May   06    Jun   07   Jul   08   Aug   09   Sep   10   Oct   11   Nov   12   Dec   result   choices get month   default   year   time strftime   Y   Date   date  -  result  -  year print Date   In this way you can get Date formatted like this example  22-Jun-2017

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The date  datetime  and time objects all support a strftime format  method   to create a string representing the time under the control of an explicit format string   Here is a list of the format codes with their directive and meaning         a  Locale   s abbreviated weekday name       A  Locale   s full weekday name             b  Locale   s abbreviated month name            B  Locale   s full month name       c  Locale   s appropriate date and time representation          d  Day of the month as a decimal number  01 31            f  Microsecond as a decimal number  0 999999   zero-padded on the left      H  Hour  24-hour clock  as a decimal number  00 23            I  Hour  12-hour clock  as a decimal number  01 12            j  Day of the year as a decimal number  001 366           m  Month as a decimal number  01 12           M  Minute as a decimal number  00 59              p  Locale   s equivalent of either AM or PM       S  Second as a decimal number  00 61        U  Week number of the year  Sunday as the first day of the week       w  Weekday as a decimal number  0 Sunday  6           W  Week number of the year  Monday as the first day of the week       x  Locale   s appropriate date representation           X  Locale   s appropriate time representation           y  Year without century as a decimal number  00 99            Y  Year with century as a decimal number          z  UTC offset in the form  HHMM or -HHMM       Z  Time zone name  empty string if the object is naive               A literal     character    This is what we can do with the datetime and time modules in Python      import time     import datetime      print  Time in seconds since the epoch   s   time time       print  Current date and time     datetime datetime now       print  Or like this     datetime datetime now   strftime   y- m- d- H- M         print  Current year     datetime date today   strftime   Y       print  Month of year     datetime date today   strftime   B       print  Week number of the year     datetime date today   strftime   W       print  Weekday of the week     datetime date today   strftime   w       print  Day of year     datetime date today   strftime   j       print  Day of the month      datetime date today   strftime   d       print  Day of week     datetime date today   strftime   A     That will print out something like this       Time in seconds since the epoch     1349271346 46     Current date and time               2012-10-03 15 35 46 461491     Or like this                        12-10-03-15-35     Current year                        2012     Month of year                       October     Week number of the year             40     Weekday of the week                 3     Day of year                         277     Day of the month                    03     Day of week                         Wednesday

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For those wanting locale-based date and not including time  use    gt  gt  gt  some date strftime   x   07 11 2019

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Simple answer -   datetime date today   isoformat

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You can use easy date to make it easy   import date converter my date   date converter date to string today    Y- m- d

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import datetime import time  months     Unknown   January   Febuary   Marchh   April   May   June   July   August   September   October   November   December   datetimeWrite    time strftime   d- m- Y     date   time strftime   d   month  time strftime   m   choices     01    Jan    02   Feb   03   Mar   04   Apr   05   May   06    Jun   07   Jul   08   Aug   09   Sep   10   Oct   11   Nov   12   Dec   result   choices get month   default   year   time strftime   Y   Date   date  -  result  -  year print Date   In this way you can get Date formatted like this example  22-Jun-2017

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With type-specific datetime string formatting  see nk9 s answer using str format     in a Formatted string literal  since Python 3 6  2016-12-23     gt  gt  gt  import datetime  gt  gt  gt  f  datetime datetime now    Y- m- d    2017-06-15    The date time format directives are not documented as part of the Format String Syntax but rather in date  datetime  and time s strftime   documentation  The are based on the 1989 C Standard  but include some ISO 8601 directives since Python 3 6

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from datetime import date def time-format      return str date today    print  time-format      this will print 6-23-2018 if that s what you want

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Here is how to display the date as  year month day     from datetime import datetime now   datetime now    print   s  s  s     now year  now month  now day

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Simple answer -   datetime date today   isoformat

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You need to convert the date time object to a string   The following code worked for me   import datetime collection      dateTimeString   str datetime date today    collection append dateTimeString  print collection   Let me know if you need any more help

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from datetime import date def time-format      return str date today    print  time-format      this will print 6-23-2018 if that s what you want

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The date  datetime  and time objects all support a strftime format  method   to create a string representing the time under the control of an explicit format string   Here is a list of the format codes with their directive and meaning         a  Locale   s abbreviated weekday name       A  Locale   s full weekday name             b  Locale   s abbreviated month name            B  Locale   s full month name       c  Locale   s appropriate date and time representation          d  Day of the month as a decimal number  01 31            f  Microsecond as a decimal number  0 999999   zero-padded on the left      H  Hour  24-hour clock  as a decimal number  00 23            I  Hour  12-hour clock  as a decimal number  01 12            j  Day of the year as a decimal number  001 366           m  Month as a decimal number  01 12           M  Minute as a decimal number  00 59              p  Locale   s equivalent of either AM or PM       S  Second as a decimal number  00 61        U  Week number of the year  Sunday as the first day of the week       w  Weekday as a decimal number  0 Sunday  6           W  Week number of the year  Monday as the first day of the week       x  Locale   s appropriate date representation           X  Locale   s appropriate time representation           y  Year without century as a decimal number  00 99            Y  Year with century as a decimal number          z  UTC offset in the form  HHMM or -HHMM       Z  Time zone name  empty string if the object is naive               A literal     character    This is what we can do with the datetime and time modules in Python      import time     import datetime      print  Time in seconds since the epoch   s   time time       print  Current date and time     datetime datetime now       print  Or like this     datetime datetime now   strftime   y- m- d- H- M         print  Current year     datetime date today   strftime   Y       print  Month of year     datetime date today   strftime   B       print  Week number of the year     datetime date today   strftime   W       print  Weekday of the week     datetime date today   strftime   w       print  Day of year     datetime date today   strftime   j       print  Day of the month      datetime date today   strftime   d       print  Day of week     datetime date today   strftime   A     That will print out something like this       Time in seconds since the epoch     1349271346 46     Current date and time               2012-10-03 15 35 46 461491     Or like this                        12-10-03-15-35     Current year                        2012     Month of year                       October     Week number of the year             40     Weekday of the week                 3     Day of year                         277     Day of the month                    03     Day of week                         Wednesday

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Considering the fact you asked for something simple to do what you wanted  you could just   import datetime str datetime date today

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I hate the idea of importing too many modules for convenience  I would rather work with available module which in this case is datetime rather than calling a new module time    gt  gt  gt  a   datetime datetime 2015  04  01  11  23  22   gt  gt  gt  a strftime   Y- m- d  H  M    2015-04-01 11 23

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With type-specific datetime string formatting  see nk9 s answer using str format     in a Formatted string literal  since Python 3 6  2016-12-23     gt  gt  gt  import datetime  gt  gt  gt  f  datetime datetime now    Y- m- d    2017-06-15    The date time format directives are not documented as part of the Format String Syntax but rather in date  datetime  and time s strftime   documentation  The are based on the 1989 C Standard  but include some ISO 8601 directives since Python 3 6

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You can do   mylist append str today

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Here is how to display the date as  year month day     from datetime import datetime now   datetime now    print   s  s  s     now year  now month  now day

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convert date time to regular format   d date   datetime datetime now   reg format date   d date strftime   Y- m- d  I  M  S  p   print reg format date     some other date formats  reg format date   d date strftime   d  B  Y  I  M  S  p   print reg format date  reg format date   d date strftime   Y- m- d  H  M  S   print reg format date       OUTPUT   2016-10-06 01 21 34 PM 06 October 2016 01 21 34 PM 2016-10-06 13 21 34

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Since the print today returns what you want this means that the today object s   str   function returns the string you are looking for    So you can do mylist append today   str      as well

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You may want to append it as a string   import datetime  mylist       today   str datetime date today    mylist append today   print mylist

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I don t fully understand but  can use pandas for getting times in right format    gt  gt  gt  import pandas as pd  gt  gt  gt  pd to datetime  now   Timestamp  2018-10-07 06 03 30    gt  gt  gt  print pd to datetime  now    2018-10-07 06 03 47  gt  gt  gt  pd to datetime  now   date   datetime date 2018  10  7   gt  gt  gt  print pd to datetime  now   date    2018-10-07  gt  gt  gt     And    gt  gt  gt  l     gt  gt  gt  l append pd to datetime  now   date     gt  gt  gt  l  datetime date 2018  10  7    gt  gt  gt  map str l   lt map object at 0x0000005F67CCDF98 gt   gt  gt  gt  list map str l     2018-10-07     But it s storing strings but easy to convert    gt  gt  gt  l list map str l    gt  gt  gt  list map pd to datetime l    Timestamp  2018-10-07 00 00 00

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You may want to append it as a string   import datetime  mylist       today   str datetime date today    mylist append today   print mylist

User · Answer

The WHY  dates are objects In Python  dates are objects  Therefore  when you manipulate them  you manipulate objects  not strings or timestamps  Any object in Python has TWO string representations   The regular representation that is used by print can be get using the str   function  It is most of the time the most common human readable format and is used to ease display  So str datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  2008-11-22 19 53 42    The alternative representation that is used to represent the object nature  as a data   It can be get using the repr   function and is handy to know what kind of data your manipulating while you are developing or debugging  repr datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42      What happened is that when you have printed the date using print  it used str   so you could see a nice date string  But when you have printed mylist  you have printed a list of objects and Python tried to represent the set of data  using repr    The How  what do you want to do with that  Well  when you manipulate dates  keep using the date objects all long the way  They got thousand of useful methods and most of the Python API expect dates to be objects  When you want to display them  just use str    In Python  the good practice is to explicitly cast everything  So just when it s time to print  get a string representation of your date using str date   One last thing  When you tried to print the dates  you printed mylist  If you want to print a date  you must print the date objects  not their container  the list   E G  you want to print all the date in a list   for date in mylist       print str date   Note that in that specific case  you can even omit str   because print will use it for you  But it should not become a habit  -  Practical case  using your code import datetime mylist      today   datetime date today   mylist append today  print mylist 0    print the date object  not the container  -  2008-11-22    It s better to always use str   because    print  quot This is a new day    quot   mylist 0    will work  gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  print  quot This is a new day    quot    mylist 0    will crash  gt  gt  gt  cannot concatenate  str  and  datetime date  objects  print  quot This is a new day    quot    str mylist 0     gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  Advanced date formatting Dates have a default representation  but you may want to print them in a specific format  In that case  you can get a custom string representation using the strftime   method  strftime   expects a string pattern explaining how you want to format your date  E G   print today strftime  We are the  d   b  Y    gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   All the letter after a  quot   quot  represent a format for something    d is the day number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   m is the month number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   b is the month abbreviation  3 letters   B is the month name in full  letters   y is the year number abbreviated  last 2 digits   Y is the year number full  4 digits   etc  Have a look at the official documentation  or McCutchen s quick reference you can t know them all  Since PEP3101  every object can have its own format used automatically by the method format of any string  In the case of the datetime  the format is the same used in strftime  So you can do the same as above like this  print  quot We are the    d   b  Y  quot  format today   gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   The advantage of this form is that you can also convert other objects at the same time  With the introduction of Formatted string literals  since Python 3 6  2016-12-23  this can be written as import datetime f quot  datetime datetime now    Y- m- d  quot   gt  gt  gt   2017-06-15   Localization Dates can automatically adapt to the local language and culture if you use them the right way  but it s a bit complicated  Maybe for another question on SO Stack Overflow   -

User · Answer

You need to convert the date time object to a string   The following code worked for me   import datetime collection      dateTimeString   str datetime date today    collection append dateTimeString  print collection   Let me know if you need any more help

User · Answer

A quick disclaimer for my answer - I ve only been learning Python for about 2 weeks  so I am by no means an expert  therefore  my explanation may not be the best and I may use incorrect terminology  Anyway  here it goes   I noticed in your code that when you declared your variable today   datetime date today   you chose to name your variable with the name of a built-in function    When your next line of code mylist append today  appended your list  it appended the entire string datetime date today    which you had previously set as the value of your today variable  rather than just appending today      A simple solution  albeit maybe not one most coders would use when working with the datetime module  is to change the name of your variable   Here s what I tried    import datetime mylist      present   datetime date today   mylist append present  print present   and it prints yyyy-mm-dd

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Or even   from datetime import datetime  date      d  m  Y   format datetime now      Out   25 12 2013  or      -    d  m  Y   format  Today   datetime now      Out   Today - 25 12 2013       A   format date today      Out   Wednesday           Y  m  d   H- M  log  format   name    datetime now      Out     main    2014 06 09  16-56 log

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Since the print today returns what you want this means that the today object s   str   function returns the string you are looking for    So you can do mylist append today   str      as well

User · Answer

You may want to append it as a string   import datetime  mylist       today   str datetime date today    mylist append today   print mylist

User · Answer

Use date strftime  The formatting arguments are described in the documentation   This one is what you wanted   some date strftime   Y- m- d     This one takes Locale into account   do this   some date strftime   c

User · Answer

Use date strftime  The formatting arguments are described in the documentation   This one is what you wanted   some date strftime   Y- m- d     This one takes Locale into account   do this   some date strftime   c

User · Answer

The WHY  dates are objects In Python  dates are objects  Therefore  when you manipulate them  you manipulate objects  not strings or timestamps  Any object in Python has TWO string representations   The regular representation that is used by print can be get using the str   function  It is most of the time the most common human readable format and is used to ease display  So str datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  2008-11-22 19 53 42    The alternative representation that is used to represent the object nature  as a data   It can be get using the repr   function and is handy to know what kind of data your manipulating while you are developing or debugging  repr datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42      What happened is that when you have printed the date using print  it used str   so you could see a nice date string  But when you have printed mylist  you have printed a list of objects and Python tried to represent the set of data  using repr    The How  what do you want to do with that  Well  when you manipulate dates  keep using the date objects all long the way  They got thousand of useful methods and most of the Python API expect dates to be objects  When you want to display them  just use str    In Python  the good practice is to explicitly cast everything  So just when it s time to print  get a string representation of your date using str date   One last thing  When you tried to print the dates  you printed mylist  If you want to print a date  you must print the date objects  not their container  the list   E G  you want to print all the date in a list   for date in mylist       print str date   Note that in that specific case  you can even omit str   because print will use it for you  But it should not become a habit  -  Practical case  using your code import datetime mylist      today   datetime date today   mylist append today  print mylist 0    print the date object  not the container  -  2008-11-22    It s better to always use str   because    print  quot This is a new day    quot   mylist 0    will work  gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  print  quot This is a new day    quot    mylist 0    will crash  gt  gt  gt  cannot concatenate  str  and  datetime date  objects  print  quot This is a new day    quot    str mylist 0     gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  Advanced date formatting Dates have a default representation  but you may want to print them in a specific format  In that case  you can get a custom string representation using the strftime   method  strftime   expects a string pattern explaining how you want to format your date  E G   print today strftime  We are the  d   b  Y    gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   All the letter after a  quot   quot  represent a format for something    d is the day number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   m is the month number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   b is the month abbreviation  3 letters   B is the month name in full  letters   y is the year number abbreviated  last 2 digits   Y is the year number full  4 digits   etc  Have a look at the official documentation  or McCutchen s quick reference you can t know them all  Since PEP3101  every object can have its own format used automatically by the method format of any string  In the case of the datetime  the format is the same used in strftime  So you can do the same as above like this  print  quot We are the    d   b  Y  quot  format today   gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   The advantage of this form is that you can also convert other objects at the same time  With the introduction of Formatted string literals  since Python 3 6  2016-12-23  this can be written as import datetime f quot  datetime datetime now    Y- m- d  quot   gt  gt  gt   2017-06-15   Localization Dates can automatically adapt to the local language and culture if you use them the right way  but it s a bit complicated  Maybe for another question on SO Stack Overflow   -

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Or even   from datetime import datetime  date      d  m  Y   format datetime now      Out   25 12 2013  or      -    d  m  Y   format  Today   datetime now      Out   Today - 25 12 2013       A   format date today      Out   Wednesday           Y  m  d   H- M  log  format   name    datetime now      Out     main    2014 06 09  16-56 log

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convert date time to regular format   d date   datetime datetime now   reg format date   d date strftime   Y- m- d  I  M  S  p   print reg format date     some other date formats  reg format date   d date strftime   d  B  Y  I  M  S  p   print reg format date  reg format date   d date strftime   Y- m- d  H  M  S   print reg format date       OUTPUT   2016-10-06 01 21 34 PM 06 October 2016 01 21 34 PM 2016-10-06 13 21 34

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You need to convert the date time object to a string   The following code worked for me   import datetime collection      dateTimeString   str datetime date today    collection append dateTimeString  print collection   Let me know if you need any more help

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The WHY  dates are objects In Python  dates are objects  Therefore  when you manipulate them  you manipulate objects  not strings or timestamps  Any object in Python has TWO string representations   The regular representation that is used by print can be get using the str   function  It is most of the time the most common human readable format and is used to ease display  So str datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  2008-11-22 19 53 42    The alternative representation that is used to represent the object nature  as a data   It can be get using the repr   function and is handy to know what kind of data your manipulating while you are developing or debugging  repr datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42   gives you  datetime datetime 2008  11  22  19  53  42      What happened is that when you have printed the date using print  it used str   so you could see a nice date string  But when you have printed mylist  you have printed a list of objects and Python tried to represent the set of data  using repr    The How  what do you want to do with that  Well  when you manipulate dates  keep using the date objects all long the way  They got thousand of useful methods and most of the Python API expect dates to be objects  When you want to display them  just use str    In Python  the good practice is to explicitly cast everything  So just when it s time to print  get a string representation of your date using str date   One last thing  When you tried to print the dates  you printed mylist  If you want to print a date  you must print the date objects  not their container  the list   E G  you want to print all the date in a list   for date in mylist       print str date   Note that in that specific case  you can even omit str   because print will use it for you  But it should not become a habit  -  Practical case  using your code import datetime mylist      today   datetime date today   mylist append today  print mylist 0    print the date object  not the container  -  2008-11-22    It s better to always use str   because    print  quot This is a new day    quot   mylist 0    will work  gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  print  quot This is a new day    quot    mylist 0    will crash  gt  gt  gt  cannot concatenate  str  and  datetime date  objects  print  quot This is a new day    quot    str mylist 0     gt  gt  gt  This is a new day   2008-11-22  Advanced date formatting Dates have a default representation  but you may want to print them in a specific format  In that case  you can get a custom string representation using the strftime   method  strftime   expects a string pattern explaining how you want to format your date  E G   print today strftime  We are the  d   b  Y    gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   All the letter after a  quot   quot  represent a format for something    d is the day number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   m is the month number  2 digits  prefixed with leading zero s if necessary   b is the month abbreviation  3 letters   B is the month name in full  letters   y is the year number abbreviated  last 2 digits   Y is the year number full  4 digits   etc  Have a look at the official documentation  or McCutchen s quick reference you can t know them all  Since PEP3101  every object can have its own format used automatically by the method format of any string  In the case of the datetime  the format is the same used in strftime  So you can do the same as above like this  print  quot We are the    d   b  Y  quot  format today   gt  gt  gt   We are the 22  Nov 2008   The advantage of this form is that you can also convert other objects at the same time  With the introduction of Formatted string literals  since Python 3 6  2016-12-23  this can be written as import datetime f quot  datetime datetime now    Y- m- d  quot   gt  gt  gt   2017-06-15   Localization Dates can automatically adapt to the local language and culture if you use them the right way  but it s a bit complicated  Maybe for another question on SO Stack Overflow   -

[python] How to print a date in a regular format?

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