Simple datenum question....I think? I just can't get it to work!

Hi all, I'm a bit of a newbie with Matlab so please forgive if this seems a bit basic.

My problem is as follows. I have a string called timestamp which contains a date and a time, e.g. 2009.01.01 00:30. I need to remove the time reading (00:30) and convert the date into a number using the datenum function. I have tried to do this using the following code:

datestamp = identifier.timestamp(1:10)  % Removes the time to give only the date

datestamp2 = strrep(datestamp,'.', ',')  % Replaces . with , to allow parsing

datestamp3 = datenum(datestamp2)  % Should give a number for the date

For some reason this code returns the error,"Error using ==> datevec. 2009 is too large to be a month".

I am obviously doing this the wrong way, but how can I get this to work?

All help is massively appreciated. Thanks.

Red Beard

Answer 1

[Red Beard]

Ok, managed to solve my own problem by reordering the datestamp string using the following code:

yyyy = identifier.timestamp(1:4)  % Sets yyyy as the year
mmdd = identified.timestamp(6:10) % Sets mmdd as the month and day
mmddyyyy = strcat(mmdd, '.', year) % Concatenates strings 'mmdd' '.' 'year'
mmddyyyy = strrep(mmddyyyy, '.', ',') % Replaces all '.' with ','
datenum(mmddyyyy)

This now gives me a correct number for the date provided in the timestamp. So for 01,01,2009 I get 733774.