How to plot strings in an cell array as x axis.

Hello, I'm working on synchronising data from two different sources. Sample data from the two sources are timecoded in this format

HH:MM:SS.FFF

where the FFF is milliseconds.

It doesn't seem that this is some form of supported data format in Matlab(?) so I have the timeseries stored as strings in an cell array. The question is if it is possible to plot the data as a function of this cell array or if there is a smarter way to perform this.

Best regards.

Answer 1

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

This format is supported by Matlab

Example

 datestr(now,'HH:MM:SS:FFF')

Answer 2

[Jan]

You can convert the time strings manually.

C = {'12:13:14.156', '12:13:16.157'}
n = numel(C);
S = sprintf('%s*', C{:});
N = sscanf(S, '%d:%d:%f*', [3, n]);  % Or [n, 3] ?!
N = [zeros(n, 3), transpose(N);
DNum = datenum(N);

Another simpler but slower solution:

C2 = strcat({'10-Dec-2012 '}, C);
DNum = datenum(C2, 'dd-mmm-yyyy HH:MM:SS.FFF');

(I cannot test this currently.)

[Nikolai]

Thanks, this worked well. But is it possible to show the original timecode format (HH:MM:SS.FFF) as the x axis value instead of datenum value? This would make synchronization with another source much easier.

[Jan]

Does the datetick() command help? Or perhaps FEX: ticklabelformat