How to transform a cell array, which contains dates but not in the datetime format, into datetime array

Hello to everybody.

The cell array contains values like this one :

x={'1991-01-09T02:00:00+00:00' ; '1991-01-09T03:00:00+00:00' ; '1991-01-09T04:00:00+00:00 .......} 

and they are always in this format.

My goal is to obtain a hourly datetime array from it in the format 'yyyy-MM-dd''T''HH' or something similar, what's important is that it has also hours, i don't absolutely need minutes and seconds, just hours.

I need this solution because the cell array comes from an external textfile (it is a simulation output), and the dates in it are not everywhere perfectly regular hour by hour, so i don't need to just create a hourly datetime array myself, but i really would like to scan that cell array in some way and create a datetime array with the ones present in the original with years-months-days and hours.

Hope that my question is clear! Thank you!

Answer 1

[dpb]

>> dt=datetime(tstr,'InputFormat','yyyy-MM-dd''T''hh:mm:ssXXX','TimeZone','America/Chicago')
dt = 
  3×1 datetime array
   08-Jan-1991 20:00:00
   08-Jan-1991 21:00:00
   08-Jan-1991 22:00:00
>> 

Fixup the time zone to match or convert to be unzoned by setting its 'TimeZone' property to '' (empty string).

>> dt.TimeZone=''
dt = 
  3×1 datetime array
   08-Jan-1991 20:00:00
   08-Jan-1991 21:00:00
   08-Jan-1991 22:00:00
>> 

Set format as want via:

>> dt.Format='dd-MMM-uuuu HH'
dt = 
  3×1 datetime array
   08-Jan-1991 20
   08-Jan-1991 21
   08-Jan-1991 22
>> 

[Enrico Gambini]

It works! One only comment, the 'InputFormat should be:

'yyyy-MM-dd''T''HH:mm:ssXXX' %%capital h instead

Otherwise dates going from 12 am to 12 pm will be saved as NaT.

Thank you a lot!

[dpb]

Not enough range in the sample data to know for sure...