Check Python String Format?
Answer : try with regular expresion: import re r = re.compile('.*/.*/.*:.*') if r.match('x/x/xxxx xx:xx') is not None: print 'matches' you can tweak the expression to match your needs Use time.strptime to parse from string to time struct. If the string doesn't match the format it raises ValueError . If you use regular expressions with match you must also account for the end being too long. Without testing the length in this code it is possible to slip any non-newline character at the end. Here is code modified from other answers. import re r = re.compile('././.{4} .{2}:.{2}') s = 'x/x/xxxx xx:xx' if len(s) == 14: if r.match(s): print 'matches'