A loop-less solution:
d=dir;
d=d(~ismember({d.name},{'.','..'}));
pick files within dir
Trouble calling files using dir command
Question about dir() function in matlab
how to use command "dir"
Videos
A loop-less solution:
d=dir;
d=d(~ismember({d.name},{'.','..'}));
TL; DR
Scroll to the bottom of my answer for a function that lists directory contents except . and ...
Detailed answer
The . and .. entries correspond to the current folder and the parent folder, respectively. In *nix shells, you can use commands like ls -lA to list everything but . and ... Sadly, MATLAB's dir doesn't offer this functionality.
However, all is not lost. The elements of the output struct array returned by the dir function are actually ordered in lexicographical order based on the name field. This means that, if your current MATLAB folder contains files/folders that start by any character of ASCII code point smaller than that of the full stop (46, in decimal), then . and .. willl not correspond to the first two elements of that struct array.
Here is an illustrative example: if your current MATLAB folder has the following structure (!hello and 'world being either files or folders),
.
├── !hello
└── 'world
then you get this
>> f = dir;
>> for k = 1 : length(f), disp(f(k).name), end
!hello
'world
.
..
Why are . and .. not the first two entries, here? Because both the exclamation point and the single quote have smaller code points (33 and 39, in decimal, resp.) than that of the full stop (46, in decimal).
I refer you to this ASCII table for an exhaustive list of the visible characters that have an ASCII code point smaller than that of the full stop; note that not all of them are necessarily legal filename characters, though.
A custom dir function that does not list . and ..
Right after invoking dir, you can always get rid of the two offending entries from the struct array before manipulating it. Moreover, for convenience, if you want to save yourself some mental overhead, you can always write a custom dir function that does what you want:
function listing = dir2(varargin)
if nargin == 0
name = '.';
elseif nargin == 1
name = varargin{1};
else
error('Too many input arguments.')
end
listing = dir(name);
inds = [];
n = 0;
k = 1;
while n < 2 && k <= length(listing)
if any(strcmp(listing(k).name, {'.', '..'}))
inds(end + 1) = k;
n = n + 1;
end
k = k + 1;
end
listing(inds) = [];
Test
Assuming the same directory structure as before, you get the following:
>> f = dir2;
>> for k = 1 : length(f), disp(f(k).name), end
!hello
'world
can you specify a range using dir() function? example: listing = dir('./data_*'); % This would just list all the data in that directory
Instead of listing all the # of files in that directory, I want to set a range and exclude all the data before and after. each data file has a specified number data_0000, data_0005, data_0010, etc. I trid using https://es.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/dir.html but didn't get much help from there.
Essentially I only want to consider the data in the range from 180 to 360.
Data_0180 to data_0360.
Within that range I'd have all the data for 180, 185, 190, ... 360.
Update: Given that this post is quite old, and I've modified this utility a lot for my own use during that time, I thought I should post a new version. My newest code can be found on The MathWorks File Exchange: dirPlus.m. You can also get the source from GitHub.
I made a number of improvements. It now gives you options to prepend the full path or return just the file name (incorporated from Doresoom and Oz Radiano) and apply a regular expression pattern to the file names (incorporated from Peter D). In addition, I added the ability to apply a validation function to each file, allowing you to select them based on criteria other than just their names (i.e. file size, content, creation date, etc.).
NOTE: In newer versions of MATLAB (R2016b and later), the dir function has recursive search capabilities! So you can do this to get a list of all *.m files in all subfolders of the current folder:
dirData = dir('**/*.m');
Old code: (for posterity)
Here's a function that searches recursively through all subdirectories of a given directory, collecting a list of all file names it finds:
function fileList = getAllFiles(dirName)
dirData = dir(dirName); %# Get the data for the current directory
dirIndex = [dirData.isdir]; %# Find the index for directories
fileList = {dirData(~dirIndex).name}'; %'# Get a list of the files
if ~isempty(fileList)
fileList = cellfun(@(x) fullfile(dirName,x),... %# Prepend path to files
fileList,'UniformOutput',false);
end
subDirs = {dirData(dirIndex).name}; %# Get a list of the subdirectories
validIndex = ~ismember(subDirs,{'.','..'}); %# Find index of subdirectories
%# that are not '.' or '..'
for iDir = find(validIndex) %# Loop over valid subdirectories
nextDir = fullfile(dirName,subDirs{iDir}); %# Get the subdirectory path
fileList = [fileList; getAllFiles(nextDir)]; %# Recursively call getAllFiles
end
end
After saving the above function somewhere on your MATLAB path, you can call it in the following way:
fileList = getAllFiles('D:\dic');
You're looking for dir to return the directory contents.
To loop over the results, you can simply do the following:
dirlist = dir('.');
for i = 1:length(dirlist)
dirlist(i)
end
This should give you output in the following format, e.g.:
name: 'my_file'
date: '01-Jan-2010 12:00:00'
bytes: 56
isdir: 0
datenum: []
I don't know of any built-in solution, but I tend to do the following:
d = dir ('C:\');
d(~[d.isdir])= []; %Remove all non directories.
names = setdiff({d.name},{'.','..'});
The setdiff command removes the unwanted elements.
Another cheap way to get rid of . and .. is using wildcards (Windows only):
d = dir ('C:\*.*');
How about this
list = dir('/var/temp');
list = list(3:end,:);
that's of course assuming that the first two entries indeed are . and .. which might not be the case on all OSes