converting date and time ind text format to a number

I currently have a lot of measurements data, which has been logged in a .csv file with date and time ind the format: "dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss". I want to sort the data by date and time, and therefore i would like to store the date/time in a variable like A = [date,time] in the format date = ddmmyyyy and time = hhmmss. The date/time data is currently stored in a very large collum vector in a string format!

How can i do that?

[Jan]

How are the date strings separated in the "very large column vector"? Please post an example.

Answer 1

[Daniel Shub]

doc datenum
doc datestr

Answer 2

[Jan]

For sorting the serial date number is more efficient: see DATENUM.