Construct a filename and then open it
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Zaida Escila Martínez Moreno
on 21 Feb 2018
Hello! I am new at Matlab and I have been struggling to find the answer of this question, so please help me. I have a series of .txt (Subject_01_1_..., Subject_01_2_...) that are in different folders (Subject_01, Subject_02...). Each .txt file contains data that I want to import to MatLab and then use. I don't know if my code is the right way of doing it but with it, I would like to import through readtable each specific txt file to an specific column of a cell array. In this way, it would be like this: {'Subject_01_1...', 'Subject_01_2...', ...}. I am wondering how I can construct the name of the filename from the FolderList in my code (first part of the name) and then a '_', and then the number jj of the second loop.
Here is the beginning of my code:
for kk = 1:20
for jj = 1:10
cd 'MainFolder'
FolderList = dir('Subject*');
cd(FolderList(kk,1).name);
My folders look like this:
MainFolder
>Subject_01
>Subject_01_1....txt
>Subject_01_10....txt
>Subject_01_2....txt
>Subject_01_3....txt
...
>Subject_02
>Subject_02_1....txt
>Subject_02_10....txt
...
>Subject_03
...
Thank you so much and if there is an easier way of doing it, please let me know. Thank you! Zaida.
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Accepted Answer
Stephen23
on 21 Feb 2018
Edited: Stephen23
on 18 Apr 2021
Using cd makes code slow and harder to debug: instead of using cd simply use faster and more reliable relative/absolute filenames. Try doing something like this:
D = 'MainFolder';
Ss = dir(fullfile(D,'Subject_*'));
Ss = natsortfiles(Ss([Ss.isdir])); % alphanumeric sort by folder name
for ks = 1:numel(Ss)
tmp = [Ss(Ks).name,'_*.txt'];
Sf = dir(fullfile(D,Ss(Ks).name,tmp));
Sf = natsortfiles(Sf); % alphanumeric sort by filename
for kf = 1:numel(Sf)
tmp = fullfile(D,Ss(ks).name,Sf(kf).name);
table = readtable(tmp);
...
end
end
To get the filenames in the correct order I used my FEX submission natsortfiles, which provides an alphanumeric sort of filenames. To use it you will need to download it, unzip it, and place it on the MATLAB Search Path (e.g. in the current directory):
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More Answers (2)
KSSV
on 21 Feb 2018
files = dir('*.txt') ; % you are in the present folder where text files are present
N = length(files) ;
for i = 1:N
filename = files(i).name
% do waht you want
end
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