How to pull dates out of character array, to get a datetime array. The character array was created from a log file in txt format.

This is related to this Q&A. Seems like I am close. Any help is apprecaited.

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/14933-how-to-get-matlab-to-recognize-a-number-string-as-a-date?s_tid=srchtitle

%Pull out dates
matchStr= 'METRIC ALERT LOG';
charArray= char(lines2023(contains(lines2023,matchStr)))
charArray = 89×43 char array
'METRIC ALERT LOG - Sun Jan  1 13:15:20 2023'
'METRIC ALERT LOG - Sun Jan  1 21:30:20 2023'
...
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Thu Dec 28 12:00:20 2023'
'METRIC ALERT LOG - Thu Dec 28 12:15:20 2023'
inDateFormat= "'METRIC ALERT LOG - *** 'MM dd hh:mm:ss yyyy";
dateTimeArray=datetime(charArray(:,:),'InputFormat',inDateFormat);  % convert date strings to datetime

Error using datetime

Unable to convert the text to datetime using the format ''METRIC ALERT LOG - *** 'MM dd hh:mm:ss yyyy'.

Answer 1

[Cris LaPierre]

charArray = ['METRIC ALERT LOG - Sun Jan  1 13:15:20 2023'
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Sun Jan  1 21:30:20 2023'
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Thu Dec 28 12:00:20 2023'
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Thu Dec 28 12:15:20 2023']

charArray = 4x43 char array
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Sun Jan  1 13:15:20 2023'
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Sun Jan  1 21:30:20 2023'
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Thu Dec 28 12:00:20 2023'
    'METRIC ALERT LOG - Thu Dec 28 12:15:20 2023'

inDateFormat= "'METRIC ALERT LOG - 'eee MMM dd HH:mm:ss yyyy";
dateTimeArray=datetime(charArray,'InputFormat',inDateFormat)

dateTimeArray = 4x1 datetime array
   01-Jan-2023 13:15:20
   01-Jan-2023 21:30:20
   28-Dec-2023 12:00:20
   28-Dec-2023 12:15:20

[Michael Hurley]

Thanks much!

You probably knwo, but I did not need to use the inDateFormat line at all with the input format correction you made in the following line. Thanks also for the quick reply.

[Cris LaPierre]

ah, I just forgot to update the code once I found the correct format. I'll update.