How do I turn date time into text

Hi, I need to use the text command to inset a date time into an image. Text only takes strings. I can't figure out how to make the current date time that I have computed into a text. Can you please help me?

specifically see below.

time_now=datetime(2017,7,23,7,48,04+dec_time);  (assume dec_time is a counter that increments inside a loop.

fooim=figure;

      imagesc(foo,clims);    % all this is doing is making an image that I am interested in

      colormap(gray)

      text(200,200,time_now)  % I want to put the date time I have calculated above into the image

thanks

Geoff

[Matthew McHarg]

I get the following error message when I try this.

Error using sprintf Function is not defined for 'datetime' inputs.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

char() the datetime object after having set its Format property.

Answer 2

[Matthew McHarg]

I am using 2015b, and it looks like the datestr command does what I need. I guess this is similar to the old num2str command. Thanks for all the help.

[Peter Perkins]

datestr is not recommended, it's intended for backwards compatibility, and uses the older formatting "language". If you need a text representation of a datetime, recommended way is to use use char, as Walter suggests.