Well, what you could say is that a value is in the required set if you subtract the date 4 events ago from the date at the current event, and that difference is less than 7 days. That is:
in = (dates(5:end) - dates(1:end-4)) < 7;
Now, I offered a handy way to find sequences in another solution: http://www.mathworks.com.au/matlabcentral/answers/34481-interpolate-nans-only-if-less-than-4-consecutive-nans
Here, too, you can exploit regexp to find the start and end indices of each sequence:
[s,e] = regexp( char(in+'0'), '1+', 'start', 'end' );
And then, accounting for the end being 4 values out, you can construct an array of indices:
patternStructure = arrayfun( @(n) struct('index', s(n):e(n)+4), 1:numel(s) );
But now, these are indices into dates, and not actual date ranges. Your question is a little strange, given your data and your result.
See, the indices for the first detected pattern in your dates array is 1:8, not 1:10, but dates(8)-dates(1)+1 is indeed 10. This is the only range in your supplied data that fits the requirement. For testing, I added:
dates(end+1) = 734864;
Which gave a 5-out-of-6 pattern from indices 9:13
Anyway, this code will detect your patterns, and it's up to you what you want to do with the indices after that =)
