Answer by user1767754 for Converting string into datetime

I personally like the solution using the parser module, which is the second Answer to this question and is beautiful, as you don't have to construct any string literals to get it working. BUT, one downside is that it is 90% slower than the accepted answer with strptime.

from dateutil import parser
from datetime import datetime
import timeit

def dt():
    dt = parser.parse("Jun 1 2005  1:33PM")
def strptime():
    datetime_object = datetime.strptime('Jun 1 2005  1:33PM', '%b %d %Y %I:%M%p')

print(timeit.timeit(stmt=dt, number=10**5))
print(timeit.timeit(stmt=strptime, number=10**5))
>10.70296801342902
>1.3627995655316933

As long as you are not doing this a million times over and over again, I still think the parser method is more convenient and will handle most of the time formats automatically.