Delete files with specific names

Hello

I have a directory with files from the same type with names like:

2016_03_24_09 -0002-0001-00058.dcm

2016_03_24_09 -0002-0001-00059.dcm

2016_03_24_09 -0002-0001-00060.dcm

etc.

Based on the last 5 figures (e.g.,*00060.dcm),

I need to delete every file that ends with a number greater than 276.

Is there a way to do it in a loop?

Thanks,

Tali

[John]

files = ls('*.dcm');                 % list of files with .dcm extension
for n = 1:N
   ind1 = strfind(files(n,:), '-');  % indicies of the '-' char
   ind2 = strfind(files(n,:), '.');  % index of '.'
   str = files(n,ind1(end)+1:ind2-1);% extract the numeric string
   if str2num(str) > 276
     delete(files(n,:));             % delete if greater than 276
   end
end

[Tali Leibovich]

Hi John

Thank you so much for your quick response!

I'm trying it now and get this error for the first line (for n=1:N):

Error using :

For colon operator with char operands, first and last operands must be char.

Have I done something wrong?

Thanks again so much!

Tali

[Image Analyst]

You need

for n = 1: size(files, 1)

and, since using ls gives you a character array instead of a cell array, you'll need

delete(strtrim(files(n,:)));

to trim off the extra whitespace. If you use dir() instead of ls(), you don't need to use strtrim().

[Tali Leibovich]

it's working!! Thank you so much!!!!

Answer 1

[Thorsten]

You can get the filenames using

 d = dir;
 filenames = {d.name};

Loop through the filenames

for i = 1:numel(filenames)
  fn = filenames{i};
  [num, cnt] = sscanf(fn(find(fn == '-', 1, 'last')+1:end-4), '%d');
  if cnt == 1 && num > 276
    disp(fn) 
  end
end

This just displays the files to be deleted. If everything is alright, replace

disp(fn)

with

delete fn

[Tali Leibovich]

Hi Thorsten

Thank you so much for your response!

I tried to use it, and changed the function from disp to delete

But for some reason I can still see the files in the folder.

Is there anything that I'm missing?

Thank you so much again!

Tali

[Image Analyst]

The files have to be in the same folder. Otherwise you'll have to prepend the folder with the fullfile() function.

Also, you might want to put

recycle on;

before the code to send it to the recycle bin instead of losing it forever.

And if you have the file manager open, you might need to refresh the view to see the changes.

[Tali Leibovich]

Thanks!

[William R]

This code will not work since

delete fn

will try to delete a file with the name "fn". So the result will be:

Warning: File 'fn' not found.

The right way to do it can be found here.

Or in this example:

delete(fn);