MATLAB printing out time as a string

Question

What is the most efficient way to print out time as HH:MM:SS?

I have it set up where my time is x seconds. Then I calculate the hours, minutes, and left over seconds associated with the x seconds.

Then when I want to print it out as a string onto a figure, I do:

sprintf('Time: %d:%d:%d', hours, minutes, seconds);

Unfortunately, this looks ugly as if I have hours or minutes equal to 0, I get something like 0:0:23.

I suppose I can change the hours, minutes, seconds to a string before doing the sprintf. Is there a more efficient MATLAB way though? Thanks!

Answer 1

The best option for date formatting is datestr, for example:

 datestr(now, 'HH:MM:SS')

When it comes to sprintf, then have a look at the formatting parameters. You'll get a better result with zero-padding:

 sprintf('Time: %02d:%02d:%02d', hours, minutes, seconds)