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Hi folks,
What I did:
import time
time.strptime('0000-10-03T15:35:05Z','%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ')
What I expected:
time.struct_time(tm_year=0, tm_mon=10, tm_mday=3, tm_hour=15, tm_min=35, tm_sec=5, tm_wday=2, tm_yday=276, tm_isdst=-1)
What I got:
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
 File "/usr/lib/python2.7/_strptime.py", line 454, in _strptime_time
 return _strptime(data_string, format)[0]
 File "/usr/lib/python2.7/_strptime.py", line 440, in _strptime
 datetime_date(year, 1, 1).toordinal() + 1
ValueError: year is out of range
Environment:
Ubuntu 12.04 x64
python --version: 2.7.3
If you need more information, please let me know...

Hello Matthias,
%Y for strptime is defined as:
"Year with century as a decimal number [0001,9999] (strptime), [...]"
so it works as specified. And actually that's correct as there was no year zero (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(year)). :)

but ISO 8601 specifies year 0 to be identical with 1 BC. Shouldn't it default to that, then?

Well, that's what C's strptime does. But that would be a feature request (if it works as documented, it's no bug). :)
I've transformed this issue accordingly. But as a feature request, it won't go into 2.7 unless I'm missing something.

I have to correct myself:
It's _not_ what C's strptime does. C's strptime returns via "struct tm" which saves only "years since 1900" in the "tm_year" field.

Datetime doesn't support BC.