renaming files to easily read it in to matlab problematic

Hello community,

i have a lot of files to rename, i want to do this because i want to read it into matlab with a loop and after that convert it into matrices etc....

The files are called this way

control(f) Jun 14, 2012 18-10-04.txt control(f) Jun 14, 2012 18-13-23.txt control(f) Jun 14, 2012 18-16-20.txt control(f) Jun 14, 2012 18-20-57.txt ... and so on.

I solved a similar problem where the files are called control(f) 1.txt control(f) 2.txt ... and so on.

with this code: b = 'control(f) '; f = '.txt'; ... for i = 1 : 486 j = j+1; var_end = num2str (i); data_str_control = [b,var_end,f]; ...

but i dont know how to handle the problem with the different times in the name of the file. The time in the file is not following a rule.

Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

[Friedrich]

Hi,

why renaming them? This is not needed. Use the dir command to get a struct array which contains also the filenames:

>> dir

.         ..        test.mat  

>> files = dir

files = 

3x1 struct array with fields:
    name
    date
    bytes
    isdir
    datenum

>> for i=1:numel(files)
files(i).name
end

ans =

.

ans =

..

ans =

test.mat

You can use the isdir field of the struct to determine if the current element is really a file.

for i=1:numel(files)
    if ~files(i).isdir
       load(files(i).name) %or do whatever you like to do with that file
    end
end

[Florian]

If I do it like you suggested:

files = dir;

for i=1:numel(files) files(i).name end

670x1 struct array with fields: name date bytes isdir datenum

... and all names are returned. Now my current folder is mixed with a lot of data - also files i dont need. I just need the txt files. How can I select those files, and choose a 480x1 vector of each file beginning at 34:2 (there is a header in each file i dont need), and after that safe this vectors in the first, second, third,... row of a matrice?

Thank you for your answer Friedrich !

[Friedrich]

Maybe use the fileparts function to check the extension of your files:

[pathstr, name, ext] = fileparts(files(i).name)

if strcmp(ext,'txt')
   %do something
end

Or simply copy all the files you need to load into a seperate folder. Then you now that dir returns needed files only.