How to parse timestamps containing milliseconds

    Chris> I'm trying to read a file containing timestamps with milliseconds
    Chris> ("2006/3/18 8:20:34.050").... When I try to parse I get an error
    Chris> about the trailing ".050".

    Chris> How should I approach this?

Here's the bad hack I use...

    def timeparse(t, format):
        """Parse a time string that might contain fractions of a second.

        Fractional seconds are supported using a fragile, miserable hack.
        Given a time string like '02:03:04.234234' and a format string of
        '%H:%M:%S', time.strptime() will raise a ValueError with this
        message: 'unconverted data remains: .234234'.  If %S is in the
        format string and the ValueError matches as above, a datetime
        object will be created from the part that matches and the
        microseconds in the time string.
        """
        try:
            return datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(t, format)[0:6]).time()
        except ValueError, msg:
            if "%S" in format:
                msg = str(msg)
                mat = re.match(r"unconverted data remains:"
                               " \.([0-9]{1,6})$", msg)
                if mat is not None:
                    # fractional seconds are present - this is the style
                    # used by datetime's isoformat() method
                    frac = "." + mat.group(1)
                    t = t[:-len(frac)]
                    t = datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(t, format)[0:6])
                    microsecond = int(float(frac)*1e6)
                    return t.replace(microsecond=microsecond)
                else:
                    mat = re.match(r"unconverted data remains:"
                                   " \,([0-9]{3,3})$", msg)
                    if mat is not None:
                        # fractional seconds are present - this is the style
                        # used by the logging module
                        frac = "." + mat.group(1)
                        t = t[:-len(frac)]
                        t = datetime.datetime(*time.strptime(t, format)[0:6])
                        microsecond = int(float(frac)*1e6)
                        return t.replace(microsecond=microsecond)

            raise

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