inputting dates in format dd/mm/yyyy (or editing a cell array or similar strings without loop)

I have a series of csv files which has date tagged to a time period. My matlab scripts does various calculations to the data and then outputs it into an excel file.

My problem is the dates are in the format "dd/mm/yy HH:MM"

I don't do any manipulation with the data so my original plan was to just keep it as a sting but as the dates go beyond 2030 excel converts the dates to 1930.

Using datestr to convert to a date and then converting back into texts doesn't work as the date is not an acceptable format.

The only solution I can think of is both inelegant and slow. Is there a way of doing this without a loop.

for count1 = 1:numel(dates) dates{count1} = strcat(dates{count1}(1:6),'20',dates{count1}(7:16)) end

Note:

dates is x 1 cell in format. (example date is in European format i.e. 1st April 2015) '01/04/15 00:00'

'01/04/15 00:15'

'01/04/15 00:30'

...

Required Output

'01/04/2015 00:00' '01/04/2015 00:15' '01/04/2015 00:30' ...

or

'01-Apr-2015 00:00'

'01-Apr-2015 00:15'

'01-Apr-2015 00:30'

...

I am using R2013a (I saw something about a function datenum but that only came out in 2014)

Thanks Carl

Answer 1

[dpb]

No problem with the date format; tell datenum what format is...

 >> dates={'01/04/15 00:15' '01/04/15 00:30'}.'
dates = 
    '01/04/15 00:15'
    '01/04/15 00:30'
>> dstr=datestr(datenum(dates,'dd/mm/yy HH:MM'),'dd-mmm-yyyy HH:MM')
dstr =
01-Apr-2015 00:15
01-Apr-2015 00:30
>>

The above is the "old" datenum/datestr prior to the new class...R2012b, to be precise.