Can I set a datetime locale for readtable in a script?

I am having problems reading datetimes with readtable. This is on a set of csv files where the date and time formats differ slightly. (I have no control over the file format.)

One file might have:

12/01/2024 01:00:05, 1

Another file might have:

12/1/2024 1:00:05, 1

All dates are in UK-style format. My default locale (on Linux) is en_US.utf8.

When I use readtable, MATLAB correctly parses the date format as being UK-style for most of the files. But for some files, it uses the US format. This if for files where the day number never goes above 12.

I don't want to change the default Linux locale, or the default MATLAB locale, because I have existing scripts that read dates in US-style format.

How can I change this one script to force MATLAB to use UK-style dates? Specifying the format as "dd/MM/yyyy :hh:mm:ss" doesn't seem to work because of the lack of zero-padding at times.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Note that "dd/MM/yyyy :hh:mm:ss" uses 12-hour format (using hh for the hours) without the AM/PM indicator. To use 24-hour format, use HH for the hours.

If the AM/PM indicator is the ‘1’ it might be necessary to programatically change that (using strrep or something similar), since I cannot find any reference to it in the documentation.

[Walter Roberson]

Also there is a stray ":" involved. You would want

dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss

Do not worry about the lack of zero padding: MM and HH both include single digits.

[Walter Roberson]

datetime(["12/1/2024 1:00:05", "12/01/2024 01:00:05"], 'InputFormat', 'dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss')

ans = 1x2 datetime array
   12-Jan-2024 01:00:05   12-Jan-2024 01:00:05

[dormant]

Thanks. This sorted my problem.