Debugging help needed please :(

I am trying to have a loop that extracts all files that do not start with ~$ and ends in xls or xlsx

This is what I have

n = length(list);
%list is an cell array of a list of folders that I have
i = 0; ii=0;
for k = 1 : n  
  Sub = list{k};
  filehunt = fullfile(Sub, '*.xls*'); 
  Excel = dir(filehunt);
%here I use the loop to "dir" all files that contain the keywords .xls
    if ~isempty(Excel)
    for k2 = 1 : length(Excel)
            ii=ii+1;
            if strncmp('~$',Excel(k2).name,2)== 0 
               goodexcel(ii)=Excel(k2).name;
%here I try to eliminate any files that have ~$ in front
               if ~isempty(goodexcel)           
                  for k3 = 1 : length(goodexcel)
                        i=i+1;
                        if ~isempty(regexp(goodexcel(k3).name, '\.xlsx?$', 'once'));
                            ExcellentExcel(i)=goodexcel(k3).name
%here I try to find all files that end in xls or xlsx instead of just having .xls somewhere in the file name
                        end
                    end
                end
            end
        end
    end   
end

This has not been able to work due to the error:

Subscripted assignment dimension mismatch.

Please enlighten my poor brain with any matlab coding skill/tips.

Thank you for your patience.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Check this out:

if all(Excel(k2).name(1:2) == '~$')
  msgbox('It starts with ~$ so skip this file');
  break; % Skip to bottom of loop
else
  msgbox('It does not start with ~$');
end

[chlor thanks]

Thank you Image Analyst. This is very nice, but I do not want any msgbox, instead I just wish to execute the code to find the files.

Can I do

n = length(list);
i = 0; ii=0;
for k = 1 : n  
  Sub = list{k};
  filehunt = fullfile(Sub, '*.xls*'); 
  Excel = dir(filehunt);
    if ~isempty(Excel)
    for k2 = 1 : length(Excel)
            ii=ii+1;
            if Excel(k2)name(1:2) ~== '~$'
               goodexcel(ii)=Excel(k2).name;           
               for k3 = 1 : length(goodexcel)
                   i=i+1;
                   if ~isempty(regexp(goodexcel(k3).name, '\.xlsx?$', 'once'));
                      ExcellentExcel(i)=goodexcel(k3).name
                   end
               end
            end
        end
    end   
end

[Image Analyst]

OK, you can take out the msgbox of course, buy you cannot take out the all() like you did or it won't work right. Also there is no concept of ~== so I don't know why you made that change also. Just use the line of code I gave you, unless you don't want it to work.

[Walter Roberson]

I recommend

if strncmp(Excel(k2).name, '~$', 2)

[chlor thanks]

Sorry, I know I have been making tons of stupid mistakes as I still learning a lot of the basics.

So I tried to use this instead

n = length(list);
i = 0;
for k = 1 : n  
    Sub = list{k};
  filehunt = fullfile(Sub, '*.xls*'); %target all the xls and xlsx
  Excel = dir(filehunt);
  if ~isempty(regexp(Excel(k).name, '\.xlsx?$', 'once')) 
    for k2 = 1 : length(Excel)
                i = i + 1;
                if all(Excel(k2).name(1:2) == '~$')
                break;
                else
                ExcellentExcel(i).name =Excel(k2).name;
                end
    end
  end
end

The result is good with removing all the files that start with ~$ but is not able to remove the files that do not end with xls or xlsx. Also, there are many empty cells within the array when I execute

ExcellentExcel.name

Can you please take a few seconds to look at my code again and tell me what is wrong with it?

Thank you for reading and I appreciate your patience with me.

[chlor thanks]

I will try what you recommend too, thanks Walter.

[Image Analyst]

This line:

filehunt = fullfile(Sub, '*.xls*')

when passed in to dir() should not return any files that have a different extension than .xls or .xlsx. What is the filename of a different file that you say it's returning?

[chlor thanks]

It returns something like interesting.xls.pptm which is a powerpoint but has the xls extension in it as well...

[Image Analyst]

You can use fileparts() to pull off the last extension

[folder, baseFileNameWithoutExtension, extension] = fileparts(filename);

Then just use extension to see whether to add to the final list.

[chlor thanks]

Although I still have not able to figure out how to get rid of the empty cells returned by the loop. The fileparts() command works great and better than the regexp() I was trying with before. Thank you very much for the helpful info!