How to get textscan working with YY-MM-DD data?

I have a text file 'bankaccounttime.txt' with contents:

151215
151216

There is a blank line after the last entry, but the problem results even if I delete it. (Dates refer to 2015 December 15th, 2015 December 16th, but I intend to convert the entire column to serial date numbers via datenum and append the result to another time text file.)

Why does this command yield the following error? How do I fix it?

code:

   bankaccounttime = textscan('data/bankaccounttime.txt','%{yMd}D')

error:

 Error using textscan
Unable to read the DATETIME data with the format 'yMd'. If the data is
not a time, use %q to get string data.

[Daniel Bridges]

Following the textscan description more closely does not help:

banktimefileID = fopen('data/bankaccounttime.txt');
bankaccounttime = textscan(banktimefileID,'%{yMd}D')
fclose(banktimefileID);

Error using textscan
Unable to read the DATETIME data with the format 'yMd'. If the
data is not a time, use %q to get string data.

I have found an easier way to do what I want, although it does not answer the question:

 booktimes = importdata('data/bankaccounttime.txt');
test1 = num2str(booktimes(1));
datenum(test1,'yymmdd')

 ans =

      736313.00

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

According to the datetime properties linked to from the textscan docs, you should use this:

'%{yyMMdd}D'

[Daniel Bridges]

Thank you for providing an answer. This works, leaving me with the problem of working with cells... (I may use importdata instead.)

To explain my mistake: I had tried '%{yMd}D' because textscan's %{fmt}D's details links to datetime's properties (as you noted as well) where one finds: "y: Year, with no leading zeros", "M: Month, numerical using one or two digits", and "d: Day of the month, using one or two digits".

It's not clear to me why this is wrong, since it says it works with one or two digits.

[Justine Overacker]

I also have data in the yyMMdd format, but when I try to read it in using the '%{yyMMdd}D' identifier in textscan, I get the error message:

Error using textscan

Unable to read the DATETIME data with the format 'yyMMdd'. If the data is not a time, use %q to get string data.

I am using R2016a(9.0.0.341360). Help?

[Stephen23]

@Justine Overacker: please upload a sample file by clicking the paperclip button.