Using input for date python

Question

I am trying to make a simple code in python 3 that shows you the day when you enter the month year and day. This is the code:

from datetime import date
s = date(2016, 4, 29).weekday()

if s == 0:
    print ("mon")
if s == 1:
    print ("tue")
if s == 2:
    print ("wed")
if s == 3:
    print ("thurs")
if s == 4:
    print ("fri")
if s == 5:
    print ("sat")
if s == 6:
    print ("sun")

The above code works, but I tried to do

from datetime import date
s = date(int(input())).weekday()
if s == 0:
    print ("mon")
if s == 1:
    print ("tue")
if s == 2:
    print ("wed")
if s == 3:
    print ("thurs")
if s == 4:
    print ("fri")
if s == 5:
    print ("sat")
if s == 6:
    print ("sun")

so I could let users enter their own day, but it gives me the following error:

Traceback (most recent call last): 
  File "..\Playground\", line 2, in <module> 
    s = date(int(input())).weekday() 
ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '2016,'

I used the input 2016, 4, 29 if it helps.

Possible duplicate of [ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: ''](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1841565/valueerror-invalid-literal-for-int-with-base-10) — jgr208, Apr 29 '16 at 19:25

jDo · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-29T20:02:10.950

You could do:

from datetime import date

usr_date = [int(x) for x in input().split(",")]
d = date(usr_date[0], usr_date[1], usr_date[2]).weekday()
print (d)

datetime.date() expects 3 integers but input() returns a string. This means that we have to:

split the string returned by input() by comma to get three parts
convert each part to an integer
feed these parts to datetime.date()

This makes more sense, if you ask me:

from datetime import datetime

d = datetime.strptime(input(), '%Y,%m,%d').weekday()
print(d)

datetime.strptime() takes a string as input which is convenient because input() happens to return a string. This means that the splitting and casting/converting isn't necessary. You can find all the different date formats supported by strptime() in the datetime docs.

Using input for date python

1 Answers1