[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #64563] datevec: undefined mmmddyy partially matched instead of mmmyyyy standard format

[Philip Nienhuis]

Follow-up Comment #5, bug #64563 (project octave):

The underlying message in:
> "all bets are off" for ambiguous date strings if no format string is
explicitly supplied
is right but the wording could be a little more rounded.
Yet I regularly run into data files where dates/times in a column have mixed
formats. I never tried if that'll work with a given format string but, well, I
guess in such cases indeed "all bets are off" :-)

Good catch, that "2013th day of August". But in Matlab r2020b:

>> datestr (datenum (2013, 8, 1, 0, 0, 0), 28)
ans =
    'Aug2013'
>> 

so even Matlab has inconsistencies between its datestr.m and datevec.m.

In Octave's datestr.m we have these entries:

% Texinfo header
## @item 28 @tab mmmyyyy                @tab Sep2000
:
:
% further down in code
    dateform{29} = "mmmyyyy";

so there we have another inconsistency and Matlab incompatibility.
Given Matlab's output my patch could be amended with format no. 28 I guess.

Maybe a check for matching format numbers in datestr.m and datevec.m in both
Octave and Matlab, resulting in a separate patch, would be a Good Idea :-)


    _______________________________________________________

Reply to this item at:

  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?64563>

_______________________________________________
Message sent via Savannah
https://savannah.gnu.org/