How to use the 'Open' command to open any .mat file found in a folder without hard coding the file name e.g. '%s/*.mat'?

Hello Community,

I am struggling to get a piece of code to work. I have asked another question here , but if I get this following part right, I think it will help answer the first question. I have been fortunate enough to find Image Analyst's answer on recursive searching through folders, so I am using that as the base code to search folders, but I have an issue with the 'open' command. In a batch, I am trying to open the file with the .mat extension that is found in a childfolder, and then for a structure to be created from the workspace variables, as follows:

if numberOfWorkspaces >= 1

    % Go through all those files and exctract the correct variables.
    for f = 1 : numberOfWorkspaces
      st = open(dir('*.mat')); % <<<<This is the part causing the error>>>>
            offset = 1;
            xlswrite('locations.xls', [st.newfolder st.X1 st.X2 st.Y1 st.Y2], 1, sprintf('A%d',offset));
            offset = offset + 1;
            fullFileName = fullfile(thisFolder, baseFileNames(f).name);
      fprintf('     Processing MAT file %s\n', fullFileName);
    end
  else
    fprintf('     Folder %s has no MAT files in it.\n', thisFolder);
  end

but, it throws up this error:

Error using open (line 68)
NAME must contain a single string.
Error in extVars (line 52)
      st = open(dir('*.mat'));

I want the code to be able to open the .mat file that is found within each folder in the batch - so I dont want to hard code specific .mat file names.

Can you advise of a solution to this problem? Many thanks in advance.

Regards,

10B.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

dir() returns a structure of information, one array element per file. There is a "name" field that holds the name. You will need to iterate over each of the times.

I don't think you should be using open() either. I think you should be using load()

dinfo = dir('*.mat');
for K = 1 : length(dinfo)
  thismat = dinfo(K).name;
  st = load(thismat);
  ....
end

[10B]

Thanks for the help Walter!

10B