How to remove decimals digits from datetime arrays?

Hi,

I have a datetime array in the format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS', and I want to round down or remove only the third decimal digit. E.g. the output should be 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SS'. It seems that I cant use functions like round, floor or ceil in datetime arrays, as it prompts an error message that suggest I use dateshift instead. However, dateshift does not seem to handle rounding miliseconds (it works if I just wanted to remove/round all decimals, but that is not what I want... like I said, I am interested in keeping 2 decimal digits only).

I've tried converting the array into datenum or extract only the 'seconds' part as a double. Also tried to change just the format but that does not really remove the third digit from the database (it seems like it is only a visual change). I think there should be an easier way to do this. Does someone know how to do this?

[Stephen23]

"I have a datetime array in the format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS'

Which of these do you actually want to achieve?:

1. change the displayed format (this is totally independent of the stored date/time information), or
2. round the stored date/time information to a particular unit/magnitude (this is totally independent of the format).

Of course both is also possible, but that would still mean two separate step which are unrelated to each other.

[Guillermo Pérez Castro]

Hi, thanks for the reply, I am actually interested in changing the stored value, that is, to round the stored date/time information to 2 decimal digits instead of 3.

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Assuming that the goal is to truncate at some precision (which is totally independent of the FORMAT), then this works:

T = datetime(2022,01,02,03,04,05.6789, 'Format','yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS')

T = datetime
   2022-01-02 03:04:05.678

S = fix(mod(second(T),1)*100)/100

S = 0.6700

U = dateshift(T,'start','second') + seconds(S)

U = datetime
   2022-01-02 03:04:05.670

Of course if you do not want to change the underlying data then you can simply change the FORMAT property.

[Guillermo Pérez Castro]

Many thanks!!! This is exactly what I was looking for :)

[Les Beckham]

Note that this is truncating the seconds to two decimal places (as Stephen says in his answer). If you wish to round to two decimal places, replace fix with round in the calculation of S.

[Guillermo Pérez Castro]

Thanks for the comment, but in this case, I do wish to truncate the decimals, so this solution will do just fine.