Formatted Datetime char values stored as numbers

t1=datetime(2012,1,1,0,0,0);
t2=datetime(2012,12,31,23,30,0);
TSarray=t1:minutes(30):t2;   %this makes a timestamp array for one year in 30 min increments
TSarray.Format='yyyyMMddHHmm';  %displays the TS array the way I need it e.g. '201208161230' Aug 16 12:30
TSstr=cellstr(TSarray);

I don't see how to get the TSstr cell array (char), or the datetime output in general, to be converted into a number array (double) of the number as it appears in the format, and not the datenum value. There must be a way to control this with datenum. In other words I want a number array of the formatted date e.g. '201208161230'. Reason being that I wish to combine with other number arrays into output matrix.

outputdata = [TSstr,data1,data2,....];

201208161230  data1   data2   ...
201208161300  data1   data2   ...
201208161330  data1   data2   ...

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Tsout = year(TSarray)*10^8 + month(TSarray)*10^6 + day(TSarray)*10^4 + hour(TSarray)*10^2 + minute(TSarray);

(You can skip setting the Format before this.)

Or you could str2double(TSstr)

[Colin Edgar]

Thank You! I get stuck on easy stuff apparently.....

[Colin Edgar]

Now I need to get fprint to actually print the whole number :( I only get 201200000000 for whole year. How to get more that %.9g? I need 12 spaces.

[Colin Edgar]

And the answer is..... %.12g. I failed to understand that while .5 means five, .12 means twelve