datetick gives me errors

I have a lot of experience in data crunching, but I am fairly new to MatLab. I am able to currently plot data, but when I try to display the x-axis values in hours:minutes (or any time format for that matter), a get an error. I know I am missing something silly, but I have searched the help files without luck for the last hour. Here is my code, with error.

>> figure
>> hold
Current plot held
>> plot(x,M01_80T)
>> datetick('x',13)
Error using datevecmx
The datevecmx function only accepts double arrays.
Error in datevec (line 309)
   [y,mo,d] = datevecmx(t);
Error in dateTickPicker (line 85)
[y,m,d] = datevec(x);
Error in datetick>bestscale (line 307)
[labels,format] = dateTickPicker(axh,[xmin,xmax],dateform,dateChoice,axVal);
Error in datetick (line 260)
        ticks = bestscale(axh,ax,vmin,vmax,dateform,dateChoice); 

Answer 1

[dpb]

You don't show definition of X, but datetick works only for axes drawn with datenum which is a double.

But, datenum is old and deprecated and datetick is klunky at best...use the new datetime class instead and plot() is already datetime aware so don't need datetick at all.

Answer 2

[Star Strider]

From the datetick documentation:

‘The axis data values should be serial date numbers, as returned by the datenum function.’

See datenum for details.

Another option would be to use datetime arrays (R2014b and later).