"strftime" format documentation is hard to find #98378

zvory · 2022-10-18T04:27:15Z

Documentation

If you're writing python, and you use "go to definition" on date#strftime you get

    def strftime(self, fmt):
        "Format using strftime()."
        return _wrap_strftime(self, fmt, self.timetuple())

Which is not very helpful. _wrap_strftime is pretty incomprehensible so reading that doesn't help.

If you look up strftime on the docs it also doesn't explain the format. If you click the link to see detailed behaviour you get this wall of reference information which doesn't have just a single example that'll tell 99% of engineers of what their format should look like.

I'm going to put up a PR to fix this.

The text was updated successfully, but these errors were encountered:

) A small example of what a full date and time would look like would help a lot of developers who may not realize that they should investigate `time.h`'s `strftime`, run `man strftime`, or click through a series of docs on the python docs before they get to the actual [definition here](https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html#strftime-and-strptime-format-codes) which still doesn't have an obvious copy-pastable example of "what the heck format does this thing actually expect?". Automerge-Triggered-By: GH:rhettinger

…ythonGH-98379) A small example of what a full date and time would look like would help a lot of developers who may not realize that they should investigate `time.h`'s `strftime`, run `man strftime`, or click through a series of docs on the python docs before they get to the actual [definition here](https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.htmlGH-strftime-and-strptime-format-codes) which still doesn't have an obvious copy-pastable example of "what the heck format does this thing actually expect?". Automerge-Triggered-By: GH:rhettinger (cherry picked from commit 6ccca69) Co-authored-by: Alex Zvorygin <grafetu@gmail.com>

…GH-98379) (#98395) gh-98378: Add small format string example to strftime comments (GH-98379) A small example of what a full date and time would look like would help a lot of developers who may not realize that they should investigate `time.h`'s `strftime`, run `man strftime`, or click through a series of docs on the python docs before they get to the actual [definition here](https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.htmlGH-strftime-and-strptime-format-codes) which still doesn't have an obvious copy-pastable example of "what the heck format does this thing actually expect?". Automerge-Triggered-By: GH:rhettinger (cherry picked from commit 6ccca69) Co-authored-by: Alex Zvorygin <grafetu@gmail.com> Co-authored-by: Alex Zvorygin <grafetu@gmail.com> Co-authored-by: Alex Waygood <Alex.Waygood@Gmail.com>

zvory added the docs Documentation in the Doc dir label Oct 18, 2022

bedevere-bot mentioned this issue Oct 18, 2022

gh-98378: Add small format string example to strftime comments #98379

Merged

slateny closed this as completed Oct 20, 2022

bedevere-bot mentioned this issue Oct 21, 2022

[3.11] gh-98378: Add small format string example to strftime comments (GH-98379) #98395

Merged

"strftime" format documentation is hard to find #98378

"strftime" format documentation is hard to find #98378

Comments

zvory commented Oct 18, 2022

Documentation