read a mat file once it appears in the folder?

Is it possible that Matlab loads a file once it appears in the folder?

Say a person is sending me many mat files through dropbox. I want to handle each one immediately after it appears in the folder. I don't want to handle them after all files are there because it may take a very long waiting time.

Is there a way Matlab can recognize a new appeared file? Or any other thoughts can solve this problem?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

[Niels]

One approach you could use is to write the filenames of all the current .mat files to e.g. a text document. You can import the contents of this text document, compare them with the actual folder contents, load the new files and then add those to the text document as well.

[Sandy]

That sounds brilliant. Just have an additional concern, if there is no new file at one time point, how can I tell matlab to wait and automatically load a new one when it appears. Do I have to set up a time interval and compare the document every few seconds?

Thank you again.

[Niels]

You could make a simple while-loop with no way to break out. Add a pause(...) at the end of every iteration and let it recheck afterwards.

It would look like this:

while(statement_that_will_always_be_true)

    load text file
    compare contents with .mat files in directory

    if different
        append text file with new .mat
        do something with .mat file
    end

    close text file
    pause 30 seconds
 end