Convert year into Matlab date format

How can I convert the year into the matlab date format if I have a big data set? I have a table:

Year Data

1999

2000

2001 ...

[Geoff Hayes]

Aoyi - do you want to convert these years into a serial date number (see datenum for details)? Or something else? Do you have a month and day or just the four digit year?

[Aoyi]

I want to convert these years into a serial date number. But is it possible to use datedum if I only have the year? As it is an error if my date is only year but it is fine if I use year and month for the date

[dpb]

Yes, datenum(*) datevector input syntax requires the minimum 3-vector [y,m,d] so can't pass just a numeric year. As you've discovered, the easy workaround is to simply augment with the 1,1 for the month,day.

The same idea as Ameer shows below also works for datenum just for the record; I recommend using datetime for new work; it has many advantages over the venerable datenum.

>> yr=[1999:2002].';
>> yr=datenum(num2str(yr),'yyyy');
>> datestr(yr)
yr =
4×11 char array
  '01-Jan-1999'
  '01-Jan-2000'
  '01-Jan-2001'
  '01-Jan-2002'
>>

You note datenum has introduced the 1,1 mo,da value anyway so may as well use the simpler form and go on.

(*) BTW, datetime is the same; it won't supply implicit default values for missing arguments (another enhancement, maybe(???) altho how much trouble is it to add a ',1,1' to the argument list, anyway? :) )

Answer 1

[Ameer Hamza]

If you have a numeric vector containing year numbers, you can convert a vector into a datetime array object as follow

myVector = 2000:2010
datetime(string(myVector), 'Format', 'yyyy')