MATLAB Programming

2 Data Types
• The day field is an integer from 1 to 31.
• The month field is either an integer from 1 to 12 or an alphabetic string
with at least three characters.
• The year field is a nonnegative integer: if only two digits are specified,
then a year 19yy is assumed; if the year is omitted, then the current year
is used as a default.
• The hours, minutes, and seconds fields are optional. They are integers
separated by colons or followed by 'AM' or 'PM'.
For example, if the current year is 1996, then these are all equivalent:
'17-May-1996'
'17-May-96'
'17-May'
'May 17, 1996'
'5/17/96'
'5/17'
and both of these represent the same time:
'17-May-1996, 18:30'
'5/17/96/6:30 pm'
Note that the default format for numbers-only input follows the American
convention. Thus 3/6 is March 6, not June 3.
If you create a vector of input date strings, use a column vector and be sure all
strings are the same length. Fill in with spaces or zeros.
Output Formats
The command datestr(D, dateform) converts a serial date D to one of 19
different date string output formats showing date, time, or both. The default
output for dates is a day-month-year string: 01-Mar-1996. You select an
alternative output format by using the optional integer argument dateform.
This table shows the date string formats that correspond to each dateform
value.
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