title: python datetime strptime wildcard
body: <p>I want to parse dates like these into a datetime object:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>December 12th, 2008 </li>
  <li>January 1st, 2009</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>The following will work for the first date:</p>
  
  <pre><code>datetime.strptime("December 12th, 2008", "%B %dth, %Y")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but will fail for the second because of the suffix to the day number ('st'). So, is there an undocumented wildcard character in strptime? Or a better approach altogether?</p>