User`s guide

R14SP2

24-10

xlsread Imported Date Format Changes

In MATLAB versions prior to R14, date values read into MATLAB from an Excel

spreadsheet using xlsread were always imported as numeric date values. The R14 and

later releases of MATLAB import dates in the format in which they were stored in the

Excel file. Dates stored in string or date format are now imported as strings by xlsread.

Dates stored in numeric format are imported as numeric date values.

Compatibility Considerations

Because of a difference in the way Excel and MATLAB compute numeric date values, any

numeric dates imported from Excel into MATLAB must be converted to the MATLAB

format before being used in the MATLAB application. For more information, see When to

Convert Dates from Excel Files.

format Options Added

You can display MATLAB output using two new formats: short eng and long eng.

See the format reference page for more information.

• short eng — Displays output in an engineering format that has at least 5 digits and

a power that is a multiple of three.

• long eng — Displays output in an engineering format that has exactly 16 significant

digits and a power that is a multiple of three.

format short eng

ans =

3.1416e+000

format long eng

ans =

3.14159265358979e+000

Nonscalar Arrays of Function Handles to Become Invalid

Creation of nonscalar arrays of function handles by str2func may be invalid or may

return different results in future versions of MATLAB, but will continue to work in R14.