Can't get string to datetime conversion to work

There seems to be some sort of inconsistency in the converting to datetime code I missed.

q=datetime('2017-05-17 19:36:00', 'InputFormat','yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss')

this works just fine. However, when I am reading the input string '2017-05-17T19:36:00' from an array, stripping the T, and putting it in exactly the same, it fails to work. example:

%data{1}(n) has the string '2019-05-17T19:36:00'
b = strrep(data{1}(n),'T',' ');
disp(b);
%displaying displays 2017-05-17 19:36:00, just like the earlier statement
timestamp = datetime(b,'InputFormat',format);

When I do this, the error message:

Unable to convert '2017-05-17 19:36:00' to datetime using the format 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss'.

is displayed. Am i missing something? are these not exactly the same? Thanks for your help.

[Walter Roberson]

could you attach data{1} as a mat file so we can check for odd characters?

[Nathan Heller]

here you go

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

The very first entry in your data{1} has a leading U+FEFF character, which is a unicode Byte Order Mark character, but is to be interpreted as a Zero-Width Non-Breaking Space if it occurs anywhere other than the first position

[Nathan Heller]

how would I go about removing that programmatically? or does it not appear multiple times and i only need to remove it once?

[Walter Roberson]

It probably only occurs once, but to be sure, use another strrep to replace char(65279) with empty

[Nathan Heller]

Thanks for all your help!

Answer 2

[J. Alex Lee]

str = '2019-05-17T19:36:00';
fmt = 'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss';

b = strrep(str,'T',' ');
disp(b);

2019-05-17 19:36:00

timestamp = datetime(b,'InputFormat',fmt)

timestamp = datetime
   17-May-2019 19:36:00

Works for me ?

[Nathan Heller]

I still get the same error when i use your code with str = data {1}(n), so i assume there must be some problem with the data file?