Help with reading and plotting date string

I'm reading dates from an excel sheet using matlab. Matlab writes the data as '22/01/2015 13:30:00' '22/01/2015 14:00:00' '22/01/2015 14:30:00' '22/01/2015 15:00:00' '22/01/2015 15:30:00' '22/01/2015 16:00:00' '22/01/2015 16:30:00' '22/01/2015 17:00:00' '22/01/2015 17:30:00' '22/01/2015 18:00:00' '22/01/2015 18:30:00' '22/01/2015 19:00:00' '22/01/2015 19:30:00' '22/01/2015 20:00:00' '22/01/2015 20:30:00' '22/01/2015 21:00:00' '22/01/2015 21:30:00'

I would like use this date on the x-axis and to make a plot with a variable in y-axis.

Can any one help me how to make a plot with this date data. Thanks Venki

Answer 1

[Jos (10584)]

Convert the dates (in variable D), using DATENUM, plot, and use DATETICK to set the x-ticks to a specific format

plot(datenum(D), YVALUES)
datetick('x',31) % or any other format

[Vengatesan]

Please see my comment to another response. Thanks.

[Shern Wei Lee]

Thank you

Answer 2

[Florian]

Use x = datenum( dates,'dd/mm/yyyy HH:MM:SS') to convert your strings to the internal matlab date number. Plot your x y data normally and use datetick('x',dateFormat) to format your x-axis. See http://ch.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/datetick.html

Regards, Florian

[Vengatesan]

Thanks for your response. I have already tried with what you suggested before writing for help. I think the problem lies in reading the data from the excel file. I use

[D,text] = xlsread('C:\...D\...xlsx',1,'A2:B2182');

This excel file has many columns, the first column is the date and second colm is number and so on.

When I use the above function to read, the date is stored in 'text', but within the quotation as '22/01/2015 14:00:00'. This is what causing problems when the datenum function.

If I could remove the 'quotation', example 22/01/2015 14:00:00, and use the datenum function it works well. Can you let me know how to read the data without quotation. If the result look like below then i can mange

Input, date =['08/03/2015 18:00:00' '08/03/2015 18:30:00' '08/03/2015 19:00:00' '08/03/2015 19:30:00' '08/03/2015 20:00:00' '08/03/2015 20:30:00' '08/03/2015 21:00:00' '08/03/2015 21:30:00' '08/03/2015 22:00:00' '08/03/2015 22:30:00' '08/03/2015 23:00:00' '08/03/2015 23:30:00']

expected output

date =

08/03/2015 18:00:00 08/03/2015 18:30:00 08/03/2015 19:00:00 08/03/2015 19:30:00 08/03/2015 20:00:00 08/03/2015 20:30:00 08/03/2015 21:00:00 08/03/2015 21:30:00 08/03/2015 22:00:00 08/03/2015 22:30:00 08/03/2015 23:00:00 08/03/2015 23:30:00

[Jos (10584)]

Did you try? DATENUM seems to ignore quote marks

datenum('''22/02/16 13:02:34''')

Answer 3

[Jan]

You can convert the shown cell string useing datenum and use datetick to display the dates as tick lables.