How do i delete the contents of a folder?

could anyone tell me how its done please? I have a number of figures saved in the folder which i want to delete using Matlab. Thank you. the figures are named as figure1 , figure2 and so on. the number of figures i have in my folder changes everytime.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

See the FAQ: http://matlab.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ#How_can_I_process_a_sequence_of_files.3F

% Specify the folder where the files live.
myFolder = 'C:\whatever';
% Check to make sure that folder actually exists.  Warn user if it doesn't.
if ~isdir(myFolder)
  errorMessage = sprintf('Error: The following folder does not exist:\n%s', myFolder);
  uiwait(warndlg(errorMessage));
  return;
end
% Get a list of all files in the folder with the desired file name pattern.
filePattern = fullfile(myFolder, '*.fig'); % Change to whatever pattern you need.
theFiles = dir(filePattern);
for k = 1 : length(theFiles)
  baseFileName = theFiles(k).name;
  fullFileName = fullfile(myFolder, baseFileName);
  fprintf(1, 'Now deleting %s\n', fullFileName);
  delete(fullFileName);
end

Or use 'figure*.PNG' if you saved PNG images of your figures instead of .fig files.

[shru s]

Thank you so so much! You are awesome!!

[sarah zizou]

Such a useful script, thanks a lot. I have used to delete my (.mat) files.

Answer 2

[Damiano Schirinzi]

Another quicker solution could be to just use:

delete('PathToFolder\*')

This will delete all the files in the directory specified by PathToFolder, where PathToFolder could be either the absolute or relative path.

If you just want to delete figures with know extension of you could use:

delete('PathToFolder\*.fig')

This will delete all figures in the directory specified by PathToFolder.

Or you could use:

delete('PathToFolder\figure*')

This will delete all files with names starting with figure in the directory specified by PathToFolder.

[Palash Sarate]

this seems to be less brute force. Thanks.

[Renan Deuter]

This doesn't work for me. I suggest it's a problem with the permission windows gives Matlab. Do you know where I can check this?

[Jan]

Please explain "does not work" with any details: Do you get an error message? Does the result differ from your expectations?

Answer 3

[Walter Roberson]

If you want to delete the folder itself along with everything inside it, then you can use rmdir with the 's' option.

rmdir('directory_I_dont_want', 's')

If you want the directory to be kept, then

which_dir = 'directory_to_delete_files_from';
dinfo = dir(which_dir);
dinfo([dinfo.isdir]) = [];   %skip directories
filenames = fullfile(which_dir, {dinfo.name});
delete( filenames{:} )

Note: this will not delete any subdirectories or their contents: I exclude them specifically, but delete would refuse to delete them anyhow.

To be honest, what I would probably actually do is

!rm directory_to_delete_files_from/*

but I am using a Unix system and "rm" is not an MS Windows command.

[shru s]

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question. This is very useful. Thank you

[Kazem]

Instead of cmplex codes, If you want the directory to be kept

rmdir('directory_I_dont_want','s');

mkdir('directory_I_dont_want')

[Walter Roberson]

@Kazem

That approach mostly works, but has the side effect of resetting the associated dates and access rights on the directory. That might potentially be important (but might not be either.)

Answer 4

[Ajay Kumar]

I have written a simple function for clearing the contents of a folder, please check it out: cleardir. Thanks!

[Markus]

Thx, does exactly what I needed.

Answer 5

[Pit Hoffmann]

Not sure if anyone needs to delete a folder with subfolders and contents in several of these folders. Here is a small function using rmdir() to delete the hole folder. It's very important to close all data of the folder to delete.

function removeFolderWithContent(path)
% Remove folder and its complete content.
% All data of the folder has to be closed.
%
% path -> path to folder as string

%% get folder content
content = dir(path);
for iContent = 3 : numel(content)
    if ~content(iContent).isdir
        %% remove files of folder
        delete(sprintf('%s\\%s',path,content(iContent).name));
    else
        %% remove subfolder
        removeFolderWithContent(sprintf('%s\\%s',path,content(iContent).name));
    end
end
rmdir(path);
end

[Jan]

Avoid calling a variable "path", because this shadows an important Matlab function. fullfile is smarter than sprintf to joind paths.

[Jürgen]

Would it be possible for Mathworks to create a warning-indication in the IDE-Editor, if one writes code that will shadow something build-in? Something like testing ‘which’ for every assignment in the IDE-background. For functions with brackets there is some precaution in the active scope causing an error… . But for functions without bracket it can survive undetected.

What is best practice to deal and avoid shadowing?

[Image Analyst]

That would be a nice idea, if you mean if your functions are shadowed, because lots of built-in toolbox functions have multiple versions and that's ok. For example

>> which -all find

[Jan]

@Jürgen: See:

• https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27853-checkvars
• https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27861-uniquefuncnames

[Walter Roberson]

for iContent = 3 : numel(content)

That code is based upon the mistaken idea that the directories . and .. will be reported in the first two entries of the results. That idea is mistaken on every operating system that MATLAB has ever been supported on.

You should instead use

content = dir(path);
content(ismember({content.name}, {'.', '..'})) = [];
for iContent = 1 : numel(content)

Answer 6

[sarah]

This worked for me:

delete('directory_to_delete_files_from\*')

it deletes all files in the directory but keeps the directory (empty).