python get time stamp on file in mm/dd/yyyy format

Question

I'm trying to get the datestamp on the file in mm/dd/yyyy format

time.ctime(os.path.getmtime(file))

gives me detailed time stamp Fri Jun 07 16:54:31 2013

How can I display the output as 06/07/2013

score 51 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 08 '13 at 00:17

51

You want to use time.strftime() to format the timestamp; convert it to a time tuple first using either time.gmtime() or time.localtime():

time.strftime('%m/%d/%Y', time.gmtime(os.path.getmtime(file)))

answered Jun 08 '13 at 00:17

Martijn Pieters

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score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 08 '16 at 14:35

4

from datetime import datetime
from os.path import getmtime

datetime.fromtimestamp(getmtime(file)).strftime('%m/%d/%Y')

edited Nov 08 '16 at 14:35

Magisch

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answered Nov 08 '16 at 14:33

Michael

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Welcome to Stack Overflow! While this piece of code may answer the question, it is better to include a description of what the problem was, and how your code will tackle the given problem. For the future, here is some information, how to crack a awesome answer on Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer – dirtydanee Nov 08 '16 at 14:47

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 18 '18 at 00:08

You can create the datetime object using the ctime str like you mention and then format it back to a string of any format.

str1 = time.ctime(os.path.getmtime(file)) # Fri Jun 07 16:54:31 2013
datetime_object = datetime.strptime(str1, '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y')
datetime_object.strftime("%m/%d/%Y") # 06/07/2013

This way you don't have to deal with timezones + absolute timestamp from the Epoch

Credit: Converting string into datetime

Linking: How to get file creation & modification date/times in Python?

http://strftime.org/

python get time stamp on file in mm/dd/yyyy format

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