datestr, add non-interpreted characters into format

Hi, I have two cell-arrays containing values like

 7.345 * 10^5
 7.344 * 10^5

 2011-01-04_16h50m20s
 2010-11-30_07h00m02s

I want to concatenate both and sort the Cell-Array by time (found a function "sortcell" in File Exchange). But the Array first has to be of the same format, of course.

How can i achieve this? I thought of converting the datenum-integers to date-strings but I didn't get how to write "h" or something in my string, especially with cellstrings.

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

[Andrei Bobrov]

data = {'2011-01-04_16h50m20s'
        '2010-11-30_07h00m02s'}
date2 = cellfun(@(x)[x{:}],regexp(data,'[-_hms]','split'),'un',0);
[ign,ind] = sort(datenum(date2,'yyyymmddHHMMSS'));
out = data(ind)

EDIT

[ign,ind] = sort(datenum(regexprep(data,'[-_hms]',''),'yyyymmddHHMMSS'));
out = data(ind)

Answer 2

[Vincent]

Okay, seems like a cellfun or loop is neccessary. But I must admit: your solution is very tolerant against errors.

Didn't know yet that it is possible to abbreviate 'UniformOutput' by 'un'. Nice :)