How to get a timestamp (date + time) in Matlab

To complete my  Matlab interface for data fitting, I  needed a Timestamp function, namely a function combining date and time into a single string.

This can be useful when you want to save files having the same base "name" (e.g. foo-x11.dat, foo-x12.dat,  etc) but created at different times.

In Matlab the timestamp is obtained with the command

>>datestr(clock, 0)

which output is (at the time of this post!!!)

10-nov-2012 14:10:20

Unfortunately this string cannot be used into a filename due to the presence of colons.
In addition I would like to have a string starting with "year-month-day" because it is a much more convenient  way to name files created at different times.
 

My version of TimeStamp that produces a string in the format :

year-month-day-hours-h-minutes-m-second-s

as for example

2012-11-10-14h10m20s

Here is the code! Enjoy!
And keep following this blog and my other one.  It's totally worth it!

----------------------------------------------------------------

function [s]=TimeStamp
%[s]=TimeStamp
% time stamp in the format
% year-month-day-hours-h-minutes-m-second-s

% Get current time as date vector
t=clock;

% convert date vector into the string: year-month-day
yyyy_mm_dd=datestr(t, 29);

% convert date vector into the string: day-month-year[blank]hours:minutes:seconds
s=datestr(t, 0);

% get index of the blank
index=find(s==' ');

% remove the string that is before the blank
s=s((index+1):end);

% get the indices of the colons ":"
ii=find(s==':');

%change the first colon into "h" and the second one into "m". Add an "s" at the end of the
%string
h_m_s=strcat(  s(1:(ii(1)-1)), 'h', s( (ii(1)+1): (ii(2)-1)), 'm', s( (ii(2)+1):end), 's');

% concate the two strings
s=strcat(yyyy_mm_dd, '-', h_m_s);


---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Alternatively, you can use the very short code provided by the first commenter :)
In this case:

function s=TimeStamp
s=strcat(datestr(clock,'yyyy-mm-dd-HHMM'),'m',datestr(clock,'ss'),'s');


---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Or the code built on the suggestion provided by the another commenter :)


function s=TimeStamp

tmp = strrep(datestr(clock), ':' , '-' );
s= strrep(tmp, ' ' , '-' );
ii=find(s=='-');
s(ii(4))='h';
s(ii(5))='m';
s=strcat(s, 's');