Generic date parser ?

[CdeMills]

Hello,

There are so many ways to indicate a date... I was thinking  about writing a
function
[timeval, nfields] = parsedate(X, Y)

where
- X is either a string, either a cellstr
- Y is a structure with fields
  - 'trigger' : a specific char wich leads to think it's a date (typically
':', '-')
  - 'format' : a string to pass to strptime
  - 'nfields' : ignored if X is a string. The number of consecutive fields
to concatenate if X is a cellstr
- timeval is either a struct, either a cell array of struct
- nfields is a scalar or a vector

The idea is to build a generic interface above strptime, with the ability to
cope with whatever date format the user has to cope with. Could it be added
to octave core functions ?

Regards

Pascal

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