### 4.1 `datetime` Class ¶

A `datetime` is an array object that represents points in time in the familiar Gregorian calendar.

This is an attempt to reproduce the functionality of Matlab’s `datetime`. It also contains some Octave-specific extensions.

The underlying representation is that of a datenum (a `double` containing the number of days since the Matlab epoch), but encapsulating it in an object provides several benefits: friendly human-readable display, type safety, automatic type conversion, and time zone support. In addition to the underlying datenum array, a `datetime` inclues an optional `TimeZone` property indicating what time zone the datetimes are in.

So, basically, a `datetime` is an object wrapper around a datenum array, plus time zone support.