"Locale" issue. Danish created-date extracted from file

I am extracting the creation date of a file on my Windows 10 PC with the following code lines:

fileInfo = dir(filePath);
fileInfo.date
datetime(fileInfo.date)

fileInfo.date is written out while datetime fails. The result is:

As you can see the extracted created-date is given in a correct, readable format dd-mmm-yyyy hh:mm:ss. But the month is written in Danish language maj. I have not had this error before, most likely because the first 3 letters of all other Danish months are the same as in English. But in the glorious month of May it fails.

As the error message tells me, I have been looking into the Locale parameter, but I am not able to use it for my specific purpose (there are e.g. several English language questions like this one but I need a Danish conversion equivalent).

I am not able to change computer settings (that will be impractical in any case, as the script will be run on different computers now and then).

Can anyone give me a helping hand? Can MatLab do a quick DK-to-EN conversion while doing the datetime command? (Could MatLab maybe do such a conversion from any language, such that this will never be an issue for anyone using the script?)

Or must I do a string-search for Danish words and replace them with English? The following is namely working well - but is very unflexible and specific:

datetime(strrep(fileInfo.date,'maj','may'));

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Avoid the whole problem by using the structure's datenum field, which is a MATLAB serial datenumber. You can easily convert this to datetime using something like this:

S = dir(...)
T = datetime([S.datenum],'ConvertFrom','datenum')

[Steeven]

Aha, this works just fine and is a neat and simple solution. Thank you very much.

What is the difference between datetime and datenum? Is one carrying the timestamp in a "date-and-time" format and the other in a "seconds-since-some-beginning-of-time" format, or how?

[Stephen23]

A serial datenumber is just a simple numeric (double) which counts the days since the date 0th of January in year 0000. In contrast datetime, duration, etc. are sophisticated objects which contain many useful methods, and which know about things like timezones, date formatting, leap years, etc.

Read more here:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/date-and-time-operations.html

https://blogs.mathworks.com/loren/2015/02/12/introduction-to-the-new-matlab-data-types-for-dates-and-time/

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

Specifying the locale would work:

>> datetime('11-maj-2018 15:39:22','Locale','da_DK')
ans = 
  datetime
   11-May-2018 15:39:22

But as Stephen says, using the datenum output from dir avoids the problem entirely.

[Stephen23]

I also considered this, but realized it would be only really suitable for one-off command-line code. Putting this in a script/function is asking for trouble when the code is distributed to other users who have different language settings. Using the datenum field will work for all users regardless of their locale settings.

[Walter Roberson]

Watch out for timezone issues either way.

[Peter Perkins]

It is possible to use ,'Locale','system', but that may also be fragile to the specifics the system settings of who's using it.