Convert 24/12 Hr. time string to a unique number

Converts a string like '14:21:3:221" to a unique integer number.

Description

The integers run from 0 to 86399999 corresponding to 00:00:00:000 to 23:59:59:999 respectively.
List of functions used:
isstrprop
strtok
str2num
strcmp

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.1.0 (R14SP3)

[Jos (10584)]

First, what use does this submission offer, except as a simple programming example, since we are already equiped with DATENUM?
Second, what about actually using datenum to get these integer values; something like:
datenum(0,0,0,H,M,S) ./ datenum(0,0,0,0,0,0.001)

[Aniket]

You are right Jos, that this is possible...
In my case, I was doing some additional time processing because of which I had to write that function...and thought it could be useful on the web...without thinking about datenum()...

[Aniket]

Another comment I wanted to add:
the datenum() function [the way we use it here..] does exactly what my last line of code does. So to answer your question of what purpose this code serves, is it checks for string validity to conform to a time string..
So for people who do not want to write that from scratch, this code could be used off-the-shelf.