handle character minus character

I have two characters which contain '18:29:42.835' and '18:29:49.425'. How is it possible to subtrack t2-t1 so as to find duration?

[Rena Berman]

(Answers Dev) Restored edit

Answer 1

[madhan ravi]

f = @(x) str2double(regexp(x,':','split'));
t1 = num2cell(f(t1)); % where t1 & 2 are your char arrays
t2 = num2cell(f(t2));
Wanted = duration(t2{:})-duration(t1{:})

[madhan ravi]

 f = @(x) str2double(regexp(x,'\D','split')); 
 t1 = num2cell(f(t1));
 t2 = num2cell(f(t2));
 Wanted = duration(t2{:})-duration(t1{:});
 Wanted.Format = 'hh:mm:ss.SSSS'

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

If you have a recent enough MATLAB version, pass the character vectors to duration() and then subtract one from the other.

If your MATLAB is a bit older, then you will need to split the vectors at the colons, then str2double() to get the individual components, and pass those to duration.

Or you could use sscanf() with a format of '%f:%f:%f' to get the numeric components and pass those to duration()