How do I get matlab to recognize a date in a .txt file?

I have a .txt file with two columns, the first with dates in the format yyyy-mm-dd and the second with prices such as '42.23'. However, when I load the .txt file into matlab it only recognizes the year.

load data.txt

>> data(1,1)

ans =

        2005

or

>> data(1,:)

ans =

   1.0e+03 *

    2.0050    0.0422

I need matlab to see the entire date for plotting purposes. Does anyone know how I can fix this?

Answer 1

[Kirby Fears]

Determine what the delimiter of your text file is. Space, tab, comma, etc. Then read the text file with one of the Matlab text reading functions.

Here is an example using textscan.

Here is some example code tailored to your use case.

% delim = ' '; % space delimited
delim = '\t'; % tab delimited
% delim = ','; % comma delimited

fid = fopen('data.txt'); % open file
dataIn = textscan(fid,'%s %n','Delimiter',delim); % read file
fclose(fid); % close file

% dataIn{1} contains dates as char arrays
% dataIn{2} contains values as doubles

% convert to matlab date numbers
myDates = datenum(dataIn{1},'yyyy-mm-dd');
disp(datestr(myDates)); % Display datenumbers as strings

You can use date numbers for the x-axis of your plot.

plot(myDates,dataIn{2});
datetick;

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

You may fnid that using readtable, and a format such as '%{yyyy-MM-dd}D%f', and perhaps specifying an appropriate delimiter, works for you.