How to get Matlab to recognize a number string as a date?

Hello everyone,

I am trying to write a Matlab script to automatically update dates within a .txt file. I have a 16 digit number string in the format of yyyymmddhhmmss and I need to get Matlab to read and interpret this number as a date. When I try datenum, datestr, or datevec Matlab doesn't seem to be recognizing the format.

When I use read through the help for the datestr, the closest preset format is yyyymmddTHHMMSS but when I simply add a T to my number string, it is still not recognized.

Any help would be really appreciated as I have been pulling my hair out over this for days. Thanks a lot!

~Sarah :)

[Sarah]

I am able to pull the information from the text file and have matlab read it as a string, it is just not recognizing it as a date.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

datenum(YourString,'yyyymmddHHMMSS')

[Sarah]

Thank you, the issue was that I did not capitalize the latter portion of the command. I appreciate the help.

[newtomatlab]

That is indeed very helpful.Thanks!

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

doc datenum

& friends

[Sarah]

Thank you for your prompt reply, but I have already reviewed the support documentation. My question is less about what function to use, (I assume datenum or datestr will be appropriate) and more about what formatting adjustments need to be made.

[Sean de Wolski]

That's explained in the documentation for datestr

doc datestr

[JAMES MAINA]

 can anyone also assist me how to get date and time from the following

"04.10.201714:20:13:730"
"04.10.201714:20:13:831"
"04.10.201714:20:13:930"
"04.10.201714:20:14:031"
"04.10.201714:20:14:131"
"04.10.201714:20:14:230"
"04.10.201714:20:14:331"
"04.10.201714:20:14:430"
"04.10.201714:20:14:530"
"04.10.201714:20:14:631"

it is in form of month.date.year.time

[Walter Roberson]

Is that a string() array? Is it a cell array of character vectors each of which happens to begin and end with double-quote? Is that entries in a text file?

If S is a cell array of character vectors that have literal " inside them, then:

datetime(S, 'InputFormat', '"MM.dd.yyyyHH:mm:ss:SSS"')