Files Under Folders (fuf)

Recursively search for files through directory trees under given folders.

Description

This function scan the folder(s) provided, and search for all files or only for those matching a wild card, specified through the * syntax.

The search can be don recursively or not and a different recursion rule can be set for each folder provided.

Depending upon an optional input argument, the function can simply return the file names or their full path.

To get the full path of a given file, FUF doesn't use the "which" command, therefore it normally works also with java function that are not loaded.

After completion, the working directory is set to the current directory at the time of the function call.

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; Listfiles
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 6.0 (R12)
• Other requirements: Tested on 6.5 R(13)

[Fahad Al Mahmood]

Excellent tool indeed! Thank you so much for creating it!

[Tomasz Kawka]

Excellent tool, it was very useful and simple to use. Thank you very much!

[Yogesh Mehta]

Thanks, It saved me a lot of effort! Good tool.

[Yangming Ou]

Great tool indeed, Very useful and convient! But I would suggest change the 'pwd' in Line236 into 'folders{i}'.

For example:
if fuf('A:\','detail') is called, the original line 236 would mistakenly outputing A:\D.xxx for some files in the subfolders (say A:\B\C\D.xxx) .

[Ink-Eyes Servant of Oni]

Nice tool. I have used it efficiently on our project.

[g f]

Nice tool. I have used it!

[Chad Webb]

Excellent utility! I've been receiving data containing the same file name in scattered directories, but needed the full directory path and filename to each file. Until now, I had to manually construct the directory structure since there was no rhyme or reason to it. This tool fit the bill perfectly! I'll be using it a lot more in the future. Good work!

[sotirios chatzis]

 

[chris gotschalk]

Have used this a lot. Very handy. One improvement (something like 'sortbyfilename') may be to assure that the file list returned using the 'detail' option are in the same order as that returned using 'normal'. I occasionally have had to sort these lists outside the function.

[Giuseppe L Cascella]

user friendy and very effective... WELL DONE!!!

[Dimitri Shvorob]

Great utility, but needs more work. Crashed, having attempted to 'cd' to a non-existent subfolder.

[Dimitri Shvorob]

.. and here's the competitor that met the challenge:

http://www.mathworks.co.uk/matlabcentral/fileexchange/loadFile.do?objectId=19550&objectType=FILE

[Kenny Israni]

Does this function work on the 7.8.0 (2009a) version of MATLAB?

[Aurelien Queffurust]

@Kenny : yes it works perfectly in 9a within Matlab and in compiled mode (MATLAB Compiler)

I use this utility in a lot of my programs and it works as expected.

The M-Lint shows that some lines of fuf.m can be improved like:
numel(X) is usually faster than prod(size(x))
Use true or false instead of logical ...
MCC use of the CD function is problematic ...

[Seyed Iman]

why I get each file name twice?
x=fuf(DynastatRoot,1,'detail');

[Aurelien Queffurust]

fuf will fail with subfolders having several single dot operators like : 10.11.12
To reproduce:
>> mkdir DATA
>> cd DATA
>> mkdir 10.11.12
>> cd 10.11.12
>> srcFile = fullfile(matlabroot,'toolbox','matlab','demos','example.cdf');
>>copyfile(srcFile,'myfile.cdf');
>> cd ..
>> cd ..
>> fuf('C:\MATLAB\SOF\r2010b\bin\DATA',1,'detail')
will return
'C:\MATLAB\SOF\r2010b\bin\DATA\myfile.cdf'
instead of
 'C:\MATLAB\SOF\r2010b\bin\DATA\10.11.12\myfile.cdf'

To workaround this issue , you need to edit the rec subfunction .
I justa dded a if-test about isempty(wild):

    elseif not(strcmp(val(j).name,'.')) & not(strcmp(val(j).name,'..')) %if the jth object under the ith folder is a valid file name
            if strcmp(opt,'detail')
                % Aurelien modif 10-Sep-2010
                % test if wild empty
                if isempty(wild)
                    sorted_list =[sorted_list; cellstr(fullfile(pwd,val(j).name))];
                else
                    % case folder 20.07.2010
                    sorted_list =[sorted_list; cellstr(fullfile(pwd,wild,val(j).name))];
                end
            else
                sorted_list =[sorted_list; cellstr(val(j).name)];
            end
        end

[mathworks2011]

excellent

[T. R.]

Excellent tool. Simple to use and very useful.

[Daniel Higginbottom]

 

[Mahmoud hassan]

excellent tool