Subject: bug#25112: 24.5; function to encode time from time string

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Dec 2016 18:08:51 +0200

> Date: Sun, 4 Dec 2016 12:56:47 -0800 (PST)
> From: Drew Adams <[email-masked]>
> 
> Enhancement request: Please add a function that accepts a time string
> and a format spec (to interpret the time string), and returns a time
> value that represents the same time.

I believe you want either date-to-time or parse-time-string (the
former is just a thin wrapper around the latter).  date-to-time is
described in the ELisp manual.