date and time serial conversion

I have a table with one million rows and 5 columns. The first column has the dates and the second column the time. I want toconvert the date and time to a number as i want to turn the table into a matrix and a matrix cannot have date and time.

[James Tursa]

How is the data stored? Cell array of strings or what? What number do you want the date converted to? Datenum or Julian Day or what?

[AA]

the data is stored in table format (so not matrix or cell array but table format). I want to convert it to a matrix. The date is given as '26.07.2004' in column 1 and the time is given as '2:00' in column 2. I want the date to appear as 26072004 and the time as 0200. Then I can convert this table into a matrix.

[per isakson]

"appear as 26072004" &nbsp Why do you want it that way? To me that is asking for problems down the road.

[AA]

you are right. datenum format is better. How do I change it into datenum format?

Answer 1

[per isakson]

Hint:

    >> sdn = datenum('04.11.2014','dd.mm.yyyy' )
    sdn =
          735907

Matlabs serial date number and

    >> [60,1]*sscanf( '12:48', '%2d:%2d') 
    ans =
       768

minutes after midnight

A nice thing about this is that you get integers (flint) and do not need to worry about precision when you do comparisons.

&nbsp

Some code added

    fid = fopen('AA.txt');
    cac = textscan( fid, '%s%s%f' );
    fclose(fid)
    [60,1]*sscanf( transpose(char(cac{2})),'%2d:%2d', [2,inf] )

returns

      ans =
         767   768   769

where &nbsp AA.txt &nbsp contains

    04.11.2014 12:47 1
    04.11.2014 12:48 2
    04.11.2014 12:49 3

[AA]

how can i incorporate the table into the time command. x variable is the the column that has the values for time and i get the following error:

b=[60,1]*sscanf(x, '%2d:%2d') Error using sscanf First argument must be a string.

[per isakson]

"the table" &nbsp what do you mean by table? Do you mean a text-file?

"x" &nbsp what is x?

Answer 2

[Michael Haderlein]

You can use datenum:

datevec(datenum('04.11.2014 12:48','dd.mm.yyyy HH:MM'))
ans =

        2014          11           4          12          48           0

[AA]

I want the date to be converted to one integer and stay in the same column and row. the table variable is called x