cross platform - Python time formatting different in Windows

Question

I'm probably missing an obvious platform difference that I should be accommodating but I'm getting this when trying to do a time format (Python2.7)...

in Linux env:

>>> import time
>>> time.strftime("%a, %d-%b-%Y %T GMT", time.gmtime())
'Tue, 29-May-2012 21:42:04 GMT'

in Windows:

>>> import time
>>> time.strftime("%a, %d-%b-%Y %T GMT", time.gmtime())
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: Invalid format string

The tuples returned from time.gmtime() appear to be the same, so I'm not completely sure what I need to change.

Answer 1

In general, you'll find that python time.strftime() supports the same set of format specifiers as the platform (or that platform's libc to be more specific) it runs on. However, only a subset of these is portable. See http://docs.python.org/library/time.html for a list. To quote the docs:

Additional directives may be supported on certain platforms, but only the ones listed here have a meaning standardized by ANSI C.

In this case, %T can be replaced by %H:%M:%S.