error in using year()

I typed exactly the same code as in the reference provided below:

Year = year('05-Aug-2003')

and I get

Year =

        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002
        2002

Why is that? Thanks.

Reference:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/finance/year.html

[Fangjun Jiang]

what is the version of the Financial Toolbox?

ver('finance')
which -all year

[Binzi Shu]

v5.6 for financial toolbox

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

There must be a variable called "year" in the workspace. Try this:

year=2002*ones(120,1);
Year = year('05-Aug-2003')
It got your answer.

Try this

year=1:120;
Year=year('05-Aug-2003')

Year =

    48    53    45    65   117   103    45    50    48    48    51

notice

>> double('05-Aug-2003')

ans =

    48    53    45    65   117   103    45    50    48    48    51

It turned out it converted the string '05-Aug-2003' into double numbers and used the numbers to index the existing matrix "year". The size of "year" happens to be large enough so the "Index exceeds matrix dimensions" error didn't happen.

I don't like this behavior.

[Binzi Shu]

yes there is already a variable called year and it is a 1*n matrix. Does that mean that the year() function will not work properly if I ever created a variable called year? Thanks.

[Stephen23]

@Binzi Shu: that is correct. When you create a variable with the same name as an inbuilt function/variable, you cannot use the inbuilt one. For this reason avoid using length, size, cell, i, j, year, etc.

You can check if a name is already used with the which function.