# Unexpected formatting of time stamp when writing to a new file?\`

**URL:** <https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/unexpected-formatting-of-time-stamp-when-writing-to-a-new-file/68455>\
**Category:** Ignition\
**Tags:** ignition79\
**Created:** [January 10, 2023, 9:03pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/unexpected-formatting-of-time-stamp-when-writing-to-a-new-file/68455 "2023-01-10T21:03:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bkarabinchak.psi](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/bkarabinchak.psi/32/83567_2.png) [@bkarabinchak.psi](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/bkarabinchak.psi)\
**Post date:** [January 10, 2023, 9:03pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/unexpected-formatting-of-time-stamp-when-writing-to-a-new-file/68455/1 "2023-01-10T21:03:06Z")

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Using 7.9.4.

Have a task where I am supposed to send two CSV files to to similar but different location. One file the timestamps are normal human readable and the other is isoformat.

I convert the existing file with normal time stamps to iso format with the following function. I had an issue where this itself was not actually writing the iso style format (hence all the print debugs) and I realized csv.writer was autoformatting the datetimes until I put a `str` around it.

```auto
def convertFileToIsoFormat(read_filePath, write_filePath):
	"""
	This file takes an already created data text file, reads through it and
	converts the time stamp columns to isoformat.
	Args:
		read_filePath: str, file to read
		write_filePath: str, where to put the new file
	Returns:
		None, or raises error
	"""
	with open(read_filePath) as csvfile:
		with open(write_filePath, 'wb') as newcsv:
			reader = csv.reader(csvfile)
			writer = csv.writer(newcsv)#lineterminator='\n'
			for row in reader:
				modifiedRow = row
				for column in TIMESTAMP_COLUMNS:
					print column
					print row[column]
					modifiedRow[column] = str(datetime.datetime.strptime(modifiedRow[column],'%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %p').isoformat())
					print modifiedRow[column]
				print 'writing row %s'%(str(modifiedRow))
				writer.writerow(modifiedRow)

```

The above works for converting the entire file.

Now, I have to split the file into 3 MB chunks. This is where my iso formatted datetimes are getting converted back into human readable timestamps but I just want to keep them in iso format. Here is my current function -

```auto
def splitFile(fileToProcess, folderToStoreTo):
	"""
	Takes a data file and splits it into <3MB chunks
	Args:
		fileToProcess: str, file path to split into chunks
		destDir: str, destination directory to put split files into
	Return:
		filePaths: list of strings of filepaths of texts that were made
	"""
	maxLinesPerFile=23000
	LOGGER.info("fileToProccess %s folderToStore %s"%(str(fileToProcess), str(folderToStoreTo)))
	currentLineCount = 0
	readFileName = fileToProcess.split('\\')[-1]
	filesMade = 1
	filePaths = []
	with open(fileToProcess) as f:
		line = f.readline()	
		while line:			
			filename = readFileName.split('.')[0]+'-%i'%(filesMade)+'.txt'
			fullPath = folderToStoreTo + "\\" + filename
			filePaths.append(fullPath)
			for l in range(0,maxLinesPerFile):
# print line
				writeData = "%s%s"%(line, os.linesep)
				system.file.writeFile(fullPath, writeData, 1)
				line = f.readline()
				currentLineCount += 0
				if not line:
					break
			filesMade += 1
		print type(line), line, str(line)
	return filePaths

```

I don't know why this is reading things as an iso and reformatting them back to a regular timestamp. You can probably recreate this if you use my second function and feed it a csv file that has iso formatted tiemstmaps. I have no idea what is going wrong here. The only thing I can thing is my `with open(fileToProcess)` is doing something behind the scenes in formatting the date or `system.file.writeFile` is doing somethign in processing the dates. I've tried changing my `with open(fileToPrcess) as f:` and I tried changing `writeData = "%s%s"%(line, os.linesep)` since a well placed `str()` fixed my previous issue but neither worked.

I am out of ideas. Something is obviously going on the background but I don't know where so I am having trouble figuring out how to stop it. Any insight is appreciated.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bkarabinchak.psi](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/inductiveautomation/user_avatar/forum.inductiveautomation.com/bkarabinchak.psi/32/83567_2.png) [@bkarabinchak.psi](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/u/bkarabinchak.psi)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2023, 3:48pm UTC](https://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/unexpected-formatting-of-time-stamp-when-writing-to-a-new-file/68455/2 "2023-01-11T15:48:25Z")

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As usual this was a programming error, I was feeding in the original file into my `splitFile` function instead of the newly converted ISO file. Nothing to see here folks.