Error with function "datenum" -- only works every other time.

I am confused by why Matlab is giving me this error, but here is the situation:

    datenum('20120701', 'yyyymmdd')

gives either the output "735051" (the correct answer) or this error:

    Error using datenum (line 179)
    DATENUM failed.

    Caused by:
         Error using dtstr2dtnummx
         Failed on converting date string to date number.

The interesting thing is that it works half the time and gives the error half the time, and I don't understand why this would be happening.

Can anyone offer some insight?

Answer 1

[Titus Edelhofer]

Hi,

if you happen to have a 64 Bit MATLAB it looks as if you got trapped by this bug: http://www.mathworks.com/support/bugreports/622845

Titus