import re


def remove_zero_padded_dates(date_string):
    """Mimic %-d on unsupported platforms by trimming zero-padding

    For example:
        January 01 2018
    Becomes:
        January 1 2018

    The regex finds a space or a hyphen followed by a zero-padded
    digit, and replaces with the symbol (space or hyphen) and digit.
    """
    return re.sub(r'([ -])0(\d)', r'\1\2', date_string)