getting the day of the week for a given date

As today is Wednesday with date June 8, 2016. how can i write a code to get the day of given dates: like what day is Nov 29 I'm trying to create a struct with date

day

month

with month and date as input

[paul Erameh]

i actually need something like this that can work for any year. meaning i would input a date and it would tell me the day. please help me out.

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

d='jun-08-2016'
d=datestr(d,'mmm-dd-yyyy')
datestr(d,'mmm-ddd-yyyy')

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

>> datestr(datenum('June 8, 2016','mmmm dd, yy'),'dddd')
ans =
Wednesday
>> datestr(datenum('November 29, 2016','mmmm dd, yy'),'dddd')
ans =
Tuesday

But a much better option would be to store the date as date vectors, which makes the processing much simpler:

>> datestr([2016,06,08,0,0,0],'dddd')
ans =
Wednesday
>> datestr([2016,11,29,0,0,0],'dddd')
ans =
Tuesday

[OLUBUKOLA ogunsola]

works perfectly. thanks

[OLUBUKOLA ogunsola]

i didn't initially want to ask about my question directly , wanted an idea that will guide me but its not working for me, the suggestions work fine but i can't find a way to fit it into what i want to do . the problem is i have a function like this m = year2016(x) the value x will correspond to a month in the year. 1 will be January, 2 will be february and so on. assuming my input is 1, for january, the code will then prompt me for another input corresponding to the date . if i input 9, intakes it as 9th of january 2016 and returns the day, which is a saturday. the output will be a struct in tis form

month: 'January' date: 9 day: 'Sat'

one of the major problem I'm having is inputing a scalar for date and returning the output as the day

[Stephen23]

As I advised, it would be easier to use date vectors rather than messing around with strings. In your case all of your inputs are numeric digits, and this is exactly what date vectors use. Your function could be something like this:

function dow = year2016(mon)
vec = [2016,mon,0,0,0,0];
str = input('Please input the day of the month: ','s');
day = str2double(str);
assert(isfinite(day),'The date value is not recognised.')
vec(3) = day;
dow = datestr(vec,'dddd');
end

and tested with today's date:

>> year2016(6)
Please input the day of the month: 9
ans = Thursday

While this might be a fun function to play around with there is no practical purpose in writing this kind of thing: for real work it is much better to use the inbuilt functions, which are well tested, well documented, standardized, and work for more than just one year (!). Either weekday, or the functions I used in my answer would be a better choice.

[OLUBUKOLA ogunsola]

works fine except it doesn't output the answer in struct form . i didn't see your reply on time because i didn't get an email so i was working on my own solution. this is what i came up with :

function  s = year2016 (M)
months (1:12)= { 'January ', 'February', ' March','April','May','June','July','August','September','October','November','December'};

     if M==1
         month= months{1};
     date =.......
         input('Enter a date : ');
    dates (1:31)={'Fri','Sat','Sun','Mon','Tue','Wed','Thu','Fri','Sat','Sun','Mon','Tue','Wed','Thu','Fri','Sat','Sun','Mon','Tue','Wed','Thu','Fri','Sat','Sun','Mon','Tue','Wed','Thu','Fri','Sat','Sun'};

    day=dates {dated};

    * * _s = struct('month','month','date','dat','day','dayy');_**
     end

(then i use elseif for other months( i write similar codes for the other months with dates adjusted accordingly)

the last line is where i now have a problem. how do i incorporate the values gotten for day, date and month into the struct function. as it is now this is what i get >> s = year2016 (9) Enter a date : 18

s =

    month: 'month'
     date: 'date'
      day: 'day'
thanks

[Stephen23]

Why not read the struct documentation? Your mistake is to pass it some strings rather than the variables themselves. You are doing this:

 >> struct('name','Oh, here is some text!')
 ans = 
    name: 'Oh, here is some text!'

but you need to pass it the variables instead.

"then i use elseif for other months" is a very poor way to solve this task, as it just means repeating lots of code by hand. Computers are very good at repeating things mindlessly. Why do you want to do the computer's job?

Consider this: the more code you write, the more difficult it is to check it, and the more bugs it will have. I showed you a solution that only takes a few lines and uses the reliable inbuilt functions. Why make it more complicated than it needs to be?

As I said in my earlier comment, the best way to solve this task would be to use the inbuilt functions.

[OLUBUKOLA ogunsola]

I understand your point and i appreciate your effort, but i am learning and i don't just want someone to be writing the codes for me. I'm sure as i get better ill get a grip on it . thanks a lot .

[OLUBUKOLA ogunsola]

also can you please adjust the code you wrote to display like this: ans =month: 'February' date: 7 day: 'Sun' i still don't understand your code and i can't modify it.

[paul Erameh]

i actually need something like this that can work for any year. meaning i would input a date and it would tell me the day. please help me out.

[Steven Lord]

Use the day function for datetime arrays.

dt = datetime('today')

dt = datetime
   09-Dec-2021

d = day(dt, 'short')

d = 1×1 cell array
    {'Thu'}