Importing Time Data

Share icon

Hi,

I have some Excel data with a column of time stamps in the format "2016-06-12 08:39:12 PDT-0700". When I import into Igor it does so as text wave. How do I get it to recognize it as a time value?

Andy

Never Mind I got a work around. In Excel deleted " PDT-0700" and then Excel recognized it as numeric (it shifts the justification to right).
Looks like you've got a solution. In the past I've parsed strings like that using 
SplitString


Something like:

Function GetTheTimes()
	Wave /T wavewithtimes
	Variable nTimes=numpnts(wavewithtimes)
	Make/O /D /N=(nTimes) NewTimes
	String olddate
	String expr="([[:digit:]]+)\-([[:digit:]]+)\-([[:digit:]]+)T([[:digit:]]+)\:([[:digit:]]+)\:([[:digit:]]+)Z" // this was my case - need to edit for your format
	String yr,mh,dy,hh,mm,ss
	Variable i

	For(i=0; i<nTimes; i+=1)
		olddate=wavewithtimes[i]
		SplitString /E=(expr) olddate, yr,mh,dy,hh,mm,ss
		NewTimes[i]=date2secs(str2num(yr),str2num(mh),str2num(dy))+(3600*str2num(hh))+(60*str2num(mm))+str2num(ss)
	EndFor
	SetScale d 0, 0, "dat", NewTimes
	Edit NewTimes
	modifytable format=1 
End

June 15, 2016 at 02:04 pm - Permalink