Copyfile/ movefile when filenames are not directly available

Hello Everyone,

I have two .xlsx files in a folder, I want to copy/ move those .xlsx files to a different folder but the user is not aware of file names which are stored in a workspace variable of the same Matlab program.

As shown below: 'flagged' is a workspace variable of my program which has file names. I want to copy/ move those specific files to a separate folder.

I tried following but it's not working

copyfile flagged(i).name newFolder

Please advise.

Thanks!

[Afzal Mohammed]

Following lines helped.

mkdir('newFolder');
copyfile(flagged{i}, './newFolder');

Answer 1

[Peng Li]

flagged is a cell so you couldn’t access it using parentheses and dot motion.

flagged{i} is your ith element in flagged. For example flagged{1} will be myFile.xlsx. If you want to move it somewhere you may also need the full directory as well unless it’s in the current directory.

[Walter Roberson]

Good point. That would modify my suggestion to

copyfile(flagged{i}, newFolder)

[Afzal Mohammed]

Peng Li, appreciate your tips, thanks.

[Peng Li]

If you need to create a folder called newFolder, use mkdir('newFolder'); first to create a folder named newFolder at the current directory.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Assuming that newFolder is the name of a variable that stores the destination folder name:

copyfile(flagged(i).name, newFolder)

However I would recommend that you should be using fullfile() and should be using exist() to test to be sure that the file exists before you attempt to copy it.

[Afzal Mohammed]

Walter, thanks for your response.

'newFolder' is not a variable, I was trying to create a separate folder in the same directory called 'newFolder' to copy/ move the flagged files.

Here is my program:

clc;
clear all
files = dir('*.xlsx'); 
for i = 1:length(files)
     data{i} = xlsread(files(i).name);
     max_val{i} = max(data {i}(:));
     min_val{i} = min(data {i}(:));
     diff_val{i}=  max_val{i}-min_val{i};
   if max_val{i} >= 100 || diff_val{i} >=35
        flagged{i}= files(i).name;  
        newFolder {i}  = flagged{i}
    end 
end

Here are my variables:

Flagged variable has some file names:

There are bunch of .xlsx files in the directory but I want to move only particular .xlsx files (names of particular files are in the 'flagged' variable) to a separate new folder in the same directory

Is there anyway I can read the file names from 'flagged' variable, copy those files from the directory and paste/move in a separate folder?

I tried what you suggested, it's giving an error.

copyfile(flagged{i}, newFolder)

[Walter Roberson]

        flagged{i}= files(i).name;  
        newFolder {i}  = flagged{i}

So flagged will contain file names, and newFolder will contain corresponding destinations, and you are setting thos to have the same contents. Either you are asking to copy the file to itself, or else you are asking that for each file to be copied, that you create a directory with exactly the same name as the file itself (complete with xlsx extension), and copy the file into that directory ???

[Peng Li]

it seems that you want to make a new folder named newFolder.

try this:

mkdir('newFolder');
copyfile(flagged{i}, './newFolder');

[Afzal Mohammed]

Walter,

ohh my bad, I apologize for creating the confusion, I was trying something and forgot to delete the last line. I know the last line from my code as shown below doesn't make any sense.

newFolder {i}  = flagged{i}

[Afzal Mohammed]

Peng Li,

Correct! that is what I was trying to. Your code workd :) Yeyyy!! Much appreciated, thanks!