Trouble importing csv-data within MATLAB - matlab

Question

I am trying to read in a csv-file that contains daily data on EUR/USD exchange rates including the dates specifying year, month and day. The problem is that using readtable(filename) puts single quotes around all table-entries and therefore hinders me using the data at all.
Detect import options:
opts = detectImportOptions('EUR_USD Historische Data.csv');
Read in the data:
EUR_USD = readtable('EUR_USD Historische Data.csv');
Substract dates and transform to datetime variable:
dt = EUR_USD(:,1);
dates = datetime(dt,'InputFormat','yyyyMMdd');
% Does not work because of single quotes
I was able to subtract closing prices and make them workable, but I am not sure if this is an elegant way of doing so:
closing_prices = str2double(table2array(EUR_USD(:,5)));
Ultimately the goal is to make the data workable. I need to compare two columns with datetime-variables and if dates do not match between the two columns I need to remove that entry such that in the end both columns match.
This is the vector with dates:
Dates vector wrong
I need it to look like this:
Dates vector correct

Answer 1

I think all you need to do is remove the ' character in order to read the data into datetime correctly. Look at the following example:
%stringz is the same as dt here: just the string data
T = table;
T.stringz = string(['''string1'''; '''string2'''; '''string3''']);
stringz = T.stringz;
%Run the for loop to remove the ' chars
for i = 1:length(stringz)
strval = char(stringz(i,1));
strval = strval(2:end-1);
strmat(i,1) = string(strval);
end
%Then load data into datetime after this for loop
dates = datetime(strmat,'InputFormat','yyyyMMdd');
strmat return a 3x1 string array with no ' characters on the outside of the string.