decoding \u200e to string

Question

In Python3, I receive the following error message:

ValueError: time data '\u200e07-30-200702:38 PM' does not match format '%m-%d-%Y%I:%M %p'

from datetime import datetime

dateRegistered = '\u200e07-30-200702:38 PM'
# dateRegistered = '07-30-200702:38 PM'
dateRegistered = datetime.strptime(dateRegistered, '%m-%d-%Y%I:%M %p')
print (dateRegistered)

The code above serves to replicate the issue. It works if I uncomment the line. It seems the string I am receiving is encoded, but I could not find out which encoding it is using. Or do I have a non-printable character in my string?

print ('\u200e07-30-200702:38 PM')
>>>> 07-30-200702:38 PM

Answer 1

You have a U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK character in your input. It's a non-printing typesetting directive, instructing anything that is displaying the text to switch to left-to-right mode. The string, when printed to a console that is already set to display from left-to-right (e.g. the vast majority of terminals in the western world), will not look any different from one printed without the marker.

Since it is not part of the date, you could just strip such characters:

datetime.strptime(dateRegistered.strip('\u200e'), '%m-%d-%Y%I:%M %p')

or if it is always present, explicitly add it to the format you are parsing, just like the - and : and space characters already part of your format:

datetime.strptime(dateRegistered, '\u200e%m-%d-%Y%I:%M %p')

Demo:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> dateRegistered = '\u200e07-30-200702:38 PM'
>>> datetime.strptime(dateRegistered.strip('\u200e'), '%m-%d-%Y%I:%M %p')
datetime.datetime(2007, 7, 30, 14, 38)
>>> datetime.strptime(dateRegistered, '\u200e%m-%d-%Y%I:%M %p')
datetime.datetime(2007, 7, 30, 14, 38)