Getting value of a COM Date object in MATLAB

I am working with a library that handles a set of COM objects in MATLAB. One of the COM objects returns a Date object/value. When this is requested in MATLAB, I get it as a string, formatted using the regional settings of the computer.

So, depending on the computer running it (regional settings), the date part may end up as:

yyyy-mm-dd
mm-dd-yyyy
dd-mm-yyyy
m/d/yyyy
d/m/yyyy

and the time part similarly:

HH:MM:SS
hh:MM:SS AM/PM
HH:MM:SS.SSS 
hh:MM:SS.SSS AM/PM

Depending on whether the Date object contains a time part, a day part, or both, any variations of above may occur. Bottom line is that I have not been able to make a method, that correctly parses the date to a valid date-time vector in MATLAB

Is there another way to do this, that I have missed, that does not involve parsing a string in a regional format?

If not, it would be nice with some build-in method in MATLAB that can do this conversion (feature request...).

Answer 1

[Friedrich]

Hi,

since you are on Windows you can use .NET to get the current System setting:

settings = System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo

After that you can access certain property which tell you how the date and time is formated, e.g.

>> settings.LongDatePattern

ans = 

dddd, dd MMMM yyyy

>> settings.LongTimePattern

ans = 

HH:mm:ss

>> settings.ShortDatePattern

ans = 

MM/dd/yyyy

>> settings.ShortTimePattern

ans = 

HH:mm

You can use this information to call the datevec function with the correct format specifier.

[Jesper]

Thank you for the suggestion. The correct one to use seems to be

System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern

That is at least the one that matches the output from the COM date on my PC.

It makes it possible to do the parsing, though it is still complicated due to string content being date with/without time or time alone - and very slow due to the text parsing stuff. But at least it gets me half way through...