MATLAB: Sorting csv filenames according to date/time

fileMATLABsorttime

Hello,
I have the following csv files in a directory:
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_03-19-18-PM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_04-17-22-PM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-03-19-AM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-06-22-AM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-45-15-AM.log.csv'
I am trying to concatenate them but Matlab messes up the order, I've tried using the natsort function but it is not giving me the right result. How can I sort it so that the result is this:
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-03-19-AM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-06-22-AM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-45-15-AM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_03-19-18-PM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_04-17-22-PM.log.csv'

Best Answer

The way I can think to do this is to extract the date and time text from the filename, convert it to a datetime, sort the datetime array, and use the index from sort to reorder the files.
files = {'Screen 5_05-06-2020_03-19-18-PM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_04-17-22-PM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-03-19-AM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-06-22-AM.log.csv'
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-45-15-AM.log.csv'};
% extract date and time
date = extractBetween(files,"Screen 5_",".log");
% Convert to datetime array
date = datetime(date,"InputFormat","dd-MM-yyyy_hh-mm-ss-a");
% sort datetimes in ascending order
[~,ind] = sort(date);
% reorder original filenames using sort order
files = files(ind)
files = 5×1 cell array    
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-03-1…  
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-06-2…  
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_11-45-1…  
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_03-19-1…  
'Screen 5_05-06-2020_04-17-2…
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