Diary file with current date and time as time stamp

I've used the diary command for years, but would now like to make the filename time specific depending on the current date and current time. How can I do that? I tried searching for this answer but couldn't seem to find anything.

Something like 9-13-2016-1529.txt

When I try to make a string out of the date (and call it say dfile) and type in diary dfile, it just creates a file called dfile.

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

dfile=[datestr(now,'mm-dd-yyyy'),'-1529.txt'];
diary(dfile);

[superkevin2009]

This is a start, but how can I get the time in there as well? 15-29 was supposed to correspond to 3:29 pm (I figure colons won't work in filenames).

[Steven Lord]

N = datetime('now')
N.Format = 'MM-dd-yyyy-HHmm'
s = char(N)

Answer 2

[Futurist4Science]

I required the same functionality so I wrote a shortcut script.

% Turn On Diary Logging
diary off 
% first turn off diary, so as not to log this script
diary_filename=['CommandWindowLog',datestr(now,30)];
% setup temp variable with filename + timestamp, echo off
set(0,'DiaryFile',diary_filename)
% set the objectproperty DiaryFile of hObject 0 to the temp variable filename
clear diary_filename
% clean up temp variable
diary on
% turn on diary logging

I tested it and it works!

example file name output: CommandWindowLog20170926T134629

You can also change the format of the desired timestamp per the arguments for >>datestr in the help file.

[Jan]

This works as expected in R2016:

diary off 
filename = ['CommandWindowLog', datestr(now,30)];
diary(filename);

The wanted file is created and the diary is written to it. What do you mean by

>>diary(filename) will not pass
variables for the timestamp to work as of Matlab R2014b"

? What do you expect to passed where?

[Futurist4Science]

Jan,

Thanks for the comment, I tested it again and it must have been a syntax entry issue that precipitated the comment note. I removed it.

Answer 3

[Steven Lord]

Use the function form of diary. For demonstration purposes I'll use help instead of diary but the idea is the same.

fun = 'sin';

help(fun) % function form, displays help for the function whose name is stored in the variable fun
help fun % command form, displays help for the function named fun (if it exists)
help sin % command form, displays help for the function named sin