How to create a custom timerange and convert it to list

I want to make a list like this:

 list = ['200501','200502','200503'....'202012']

I want I could hard code the list from 200501(jan 2005) to 202012(dec 2020) but I would like to do it in a smarter way.

I tried:

l = pd.date_range(start='2005-01', end='2021-01', freq='m')

and I get a <class 'pandas.core.indexes.datetimes.DatetimeIndex'> with the dates I want.

But now I want to transform it to a list and change 2005-01-31 (that the output format i got) to 200501

my expected result is list = ['200501','200502','200503'....'202012']
I tried to cast l to list but if fails.

What’s the best approach to do it?

>Solution :

You could use strftime:

out = pd.date_range(start='2005-01', end='2021-01', freq='m').strftime('%Y%m').tolist()

Output:

['200501',
 '200502',
 '200503',
 '200504',
 ...
 '202010',
 '202011',
 '202012']