Automating a holiday date for any year in Matlab

Question

The code below gives a decimal day for one specific year.

HolidayArrayDate(2) = datenum(2012,01,16,00,00,00); %MartinLutherKingJrBirthday

I am trying to make the holiday more general for an input "dataYear" instead of specifying it as "2012". Martin Luther King Jr Birthday is the third Monday of ever year. When i provide it an input of any year 2010/2011/2012/2013/2014 through "dataYear", it should automatically choose the third Monday in January for me. How would i dot this?

Thank you!

Answer 1

Starting from the first day of the year, 21 days always suffice to find the third Monday. So: get serial date number for first day of the year (with datenum ); get day-of-the-week for that and the following 20 days ( datestr(..., 'd') ); find the first three Mondays ( find(...=='M', 3 ); and finally pick the third one and convert it into date string ( datestr ):

dataYear = 2012; %// input
f = datenum(dataYear,1,1); %// 1st day of year, in serial date number format
r = find(datestr(f+(0:20), 'd')=='M', 3); %// find three Mondays from that day on
result = datestr(f+r(3)-1); %// third Monday, in date string format