how to split a cell into a year and a month?

Hello to All, Could you please help me in splitting a cell, e.g. 192608, into 1926.08 or 1926/08? Such that I have a vector of date rows of the 'year.mm' format.

Thank you so much.

Cheers, Tamar

[James Tursa]

Please post exactly what format the data is currently in. Do you have a string, e.g. '192608', or do you have a number, e.g. 192608, or do you have a cell array that has one of these, or what? Do you have a vector of these that need converting?

[Tamar Pichkhadze]

Hi James, thank you so much. I have a vestor of Dates that looks like 192608, 192708 etc. So I would like to split these 192608.. into 1926.08/

Thanks a lot!

Cheers, Tamar

[dpb]

That still doesn't answer the question precisely...they can still be either numeric or character strings.

Type

which Dates

presuming Dates is the variable name for the vector; otherwise, obviously, use the name of the variable you do have.

[Tamar Pichkhadze]

The Dates are numeric. Thank you.

Answer 1

[dpb]

>> c=192608;  % numeric
>> datestr(datenum(fix(c/100),rem(c,100),1),'YYYY.mm')
ans =
1926.08
>> cc='192608';  % character string
>> datestr(datenum(cc,'YYYYmm'),'YYYY.mm')
ans =
1926.08
>>

Answer 2

[Tamar Pichkhadze]

Hi dpb (sorry I dont't know your name), Thanks a lot for your quick reply!

Trying to implement your advice, but doesn't work for me as of now. So I typed in matlab editor: data = datenum(datestr(fix('Dates'), 'YYYY.mm')); where "Dates" is a column (a vector rather) of lots of rows with 192608, 192708 etc. I assume to be doing this incorrectly (completely new to MATLAB).

I appreciate your help a lot.

Cheers, Tamar

[dpb]

"I typed in matlab editor:"

data = datenum(datestr(fix('Dates'), 'YYYY.mm'));

Ayup, that's got a problem; 'Dates' in the argument list is the character string, not the variable. Leave off the quotes.

You've also got the functions in wrong order; if the values are numeric to get the specific date string it would be

>> d=[192608; 192708];  % numeric vector two entries
>> ds=datestr(datenum(fix(d/100),rem(d,100),1),'YYYY.mm')
ds =
1926.08
1927.08
>>

The above turns the numeric value into year, month and assumed day 1 which are the minimum three arguments datenum needs for numeric inputs. datestr then takes that date number and formats it per the format requested as four-digit-year.two-digit-month

[Tamar Pichkhadze]

dpb, it worked!! hurray! thank you so much. have a lovely rest of the day. Best regards, Tamar