Plotting a graph of a date !!

I am trying to plot a graph of the amount of rain over one year ( 12 months) using the code below, but the problem is that only 3 months appear on the graph ( Jan, Feb and March) and I have no I idea where I went wrong !!

startDate = datenum('Oct 1991');
endDate = datenum('Sep 1992');
xData = linspace(startDate,endDate,12);
plot(xData,Max_rain)
datetick('x','mmm')

Answer 1

[Adam]

'Oct 1991' and 'Sep 1992'

are not a valid format for a date string so these get interpreted totally differently to what you expect.

doc datenum

has a big section on the valid formats for DateString. e.g.

startDate = datenum('1-Oct-1991');

So far as I can see you cannot have a date that does not include a day so I guess you can just pick whatever day suits you for each month.

You can do something like this:

startDate = datenum('Oct/1991', 'mmm/yyyy' )

but

datestr( startDate )

will still default to:

01-Oct-1991

because to create the date it also specifies a number.

[Yumi Lee]

Thank you so much, you SAVED my life :)

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

In recent versions of MATLAB (since R2014b), do this:

>> t = datetime(1991,10,1) + calmonths(0:11)
t = 
  1×12 datetime array
Columns 1 through 9
   01-Oct-1991   01-Nov-1991   01-Dec-1991   01-Jan-1992   01-Feb-1992   01-Mar-1992   01-Apr-1992   01-May-1992   01-Jun-1992
Columns 10 through 12
   01-Jul-1992   01-Aug-1992   01-Sep-1992
>> x = 1:12;
>> plot(t,x)