["python","datetime","time"]
How to get the seconds since epoch from the time + date output of gmtime()?

How do you do reverse gmtime(), where you put the time + date and get the number of seconds? I have strings like 'Jul 9, 2009 @ 20:02:58 UTC', and I want to get back the number of seconds between the epoch and July 9, 2009. I have tried time.strftime but I don't know how to use it properly, or if it is the correct command to use.
If you got here because a search engine told you this is how to get the Unix timestamp, stop reading this answer. Scroll up one. If you want to reverse time.gmtime(), you want calendar.timegm(). >>> calendar.timegm(time.gmtime()) 1293581619.0 You can turn your string into a time tuple with time.strptime(), which returns a time tuple that you can pass to calendar.timegm(): >>> import calendar >>> import time >>> calendar.timegm(time.strptime('Jul 9, 2009 @ 20:02:58 UTC', '%b %d, %Y @ %H:%M:%S UTC')) 1247169778 More information about calendar module here