How can I print a date/time from time::strftime without leading zeros?

Question

How can I print a date/time without leading zeros? For example, Jul 5, 9:15.

According to the docs it uses the same syntax as strftime, however suppressing leading zeros

time::strftime("%b %-d, %-I:%M", &time::now()).unwrap()

leads to an error:

thread '' panicked at 'called Result::unwrap() on an Err value: InvalidFormatSpecifier('-')', ../src/libcore/result.rs:746

I suspect Rust doesn't support the glibc extensions that provide this flag (and several others); however there is no syntax for non-prefixed date/time; the alternative (%l) just prefixes with blank space which is equally useless.

I could create the string by hand, but that defeats the purpose of the function.

Answer 1

Looking the code we can confirm that time crate does not support the flag -. Also note that time crate is on rust-lang-deprecated user, so it is being deprecated.

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That said, I recommend you use the chrono crate. In addition to supporting the format specifiers you want, the chrono crate also has support for timezones and much more.

let now = chrono::Utc::now();
println!("{}", now.format("%b %-d, %-I:%M").to_string());