handle character minus character

I have two characters which contain '18:29:42.835' and '18:29:49.425'. How is it possible to subtrack t2-t1 so as to find duration?

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

f = @(x) str2double(regexp(x,':','split'));
t1 = num2cell(f(t1)); % where t1 & 2 are your char arrays
t2 = num2cell(f(t2));
Wanted = duration(t2{:})-duration(t1{:})

[Ancalagon8]

thanks it worked! But it only shows me seconds and i need also the difference in decimals..

[madhan ravi]

 f = @(x) str2double(regexp(x,'\D','split')); 
 t1 = num2cell(f(t1));
 t2 = num2cell(f(t2));
 Wanted = duration(t2{:})-duration(t1{:});
 Wanted.Format = 'hh:mm:ss.SSSS'

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

If you have a recent enough MATLAB version, pass the character vectors to duration() and then subtract one from the other.

If your MATLAB is a bit older, then you will need to split the vectors at the colons, then str2double() to get the individual components, and pass those to duration.

Or you could use sscanf() with a format of '%f:%f:%f' to get the numeric components and pass those to duration()