delete files in folder with different endings

Hey guys,

I am trying to delete several files with different endings in a folder.

the problem is that there are some files that should not be deleted. I want to delete everything but ".odb", ".txt". ".py" and ".m".

I tried it like this

FolderName=pwd;
FolderDir = dir(FolderName);
Name = {FolderDir.name};
Name(strcmp(Name, '.')) = [];
Name(strcmp(Name, '..')) = [];
for iName = 1:length(Name)
    aName = fullfile(FolderName, Name{iName});
    if (aName(:,((end-3):end)) == '.odb' || aName(:,((end-3):end)) == '.txt' || aName(:,((end-2):end)) == '.py' || aName(:,((end-1):end)) == '.m')
        continue
    else
        try
            delete(aName);
        catch  
            warning('Cannot delete %s', aName);
        end
    end
end

When I only use the first argument in the If line it works just fine. With multiple arguments I get an Error

"Operands to the || and && operators must be convertible to logical scalar values.

Error in Loeschtest (line 8)

if (aName(:,((end-3):end)) == '.odb' || aName(:,((end-3):end)) == '.txt')% || aName(:,((end-2):end)) == '.py' || aName(:,((end-1):end)) == '.m')"

Can anyone help me with the error or is there a better way do delete the files? I got 15 files with 13 different endings and this code shall become part of a bigger project which creates these 15 files in a loop of 50 iterations. Thats why I want to delete the unnecessary files at the end of every iteration

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

K = [".odb", ".txt", ".py", ".m"];
D = pwd;
S = dir(fullfile(D,'*.*'));
S = S(~[S.isdir]); % files only
for k = 1:numel(S)
    F = S(k).name;
    [~,~,E] = fileparts(F)
    if ismember(E,K)
        try
            delete(fullfile(D,F));
        catch  
            warning('Cannot delete %s',F);
        end
    end
end

Another (possibly more efficient) approach would be to use SETDIFF to get an array of all existing file extensions that you do NOT wish to keep, and then loop over that list, generating a suitable filename string for DELETE including the wildcard character. That lets the OS delete the files as quickly as it can. Something like this (untested):

[~,~,E] = fileparts({S.name});
X = setdiff(unique(E),K); % file extensions to delete
for k = 1:numel(X)
    F = sprintf('*%s',X{k});
    delete(fullfile(D,F))
end

[Patrick Benz]

As i said above, this was just my approach.

Thanks for answering with more robust and faster way.

Answer 2

[Patrick Benz]

I just answered the question myself.

for later use:

if (aName(:,((end-3):end)) == ".odb" || aName(:,((end-3):end)) == ".txt" || aName(:,((end-2):end)) == ".py" || aName(:,((end-1):end)) == ".m")
end

replace ' with " and everything is working like it should