josh> Shouldn't datetime have strptime? Sure, but it's not quite as trivial to implement as was strftime() support. While strftime() is a C library function and thus easily called from within the datetime C code, strptime() is implemented in Python as part of the time module for portability (strptime(3) is not universally available). You'd need to import the time module, call its strptime() function with the input string and format, then use the tuple it returns to initialize a new datetime object.
If someone wants to get their feet wet with extension module programming this might be a good place to start. Mostly, I think nobody who has needed/wanted it so far has the round tuits available to spend on the task. Skip -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list