Find specific files based on sections of file name

Asked by Robert on 12 Jan 2018

Latest activity Commented on by Walter Roberson on 19 Jul 2019

492 views (last 30 days)

Hello,

I want to generate an analysis using .csv files. How could I make a search to load only files that have specifics sections in the file name? Like this example, assuming folder AA has files:

 Lab_001_CAN_033.csv
 Lab_011_USA_031.csv
 Lab_021_CAN_031.csv
 Lab_091_CAN_032.csv
 Lab_001_CAN_003.csv
 Lab_011_USA_011.csv
 Lab_021_CAN_001.csv
 Lab_091_CAN_002.csv

But just read files with the section 'CAN' and the condition that the last 3 numbers on file name (sample number) have to be between 0 and 10 (or 000 and 010), so I can only download the files:

 Lab_001_CAN_003.csv
 Lab_021_CAN_001.csv
 Lab_091_CAN_002.csv

For a few files this is not a problem, but for thousands of files (as I have) it gets complicated.

Thanks!

1 Comment

Robert on 12 Jan 2018

Sorry, I forgot to add that I also would like to make copies of those files and save them to a folder named BB.

1 Answer

Link

Answer by Kris Fedorenko on 12 Jan 2018

Accepted Answer

Function dir with a wildcard (*) might be somewhat helpful. For example

fstruct = dir('*_CAN_*.csv')

would return a structure of all files with a .CSV extension containing "_CAN_" as part of their names.

For only getting the numbers between 001 and 010 you would need to do something more involved. You might consider an if-statement to filter the results of the "dir" command while looping over them. Or maybe you can take a look at Regular Expressions.

Note that

fstruct = dir('*_CAN_00*.csv')

would already return all files containing "_CAN_00" in their name, so one possible ad-hoc workaround would be to do that to get files with _CAN_001, _CAN_002, ..., _CAN_009, and run a separate query for _CAN_010 file

3 Comments

Robert on 16 Jan 2018

Great, thanks Kris!

Coco on 19 Jul 2019

Hi Kris,

I have the save question. After i get the struct which have all files, whats the code of next step if i want to save those files into a new folder? I am a nebby of Matlab. Thank you.

Walter Roberson on 19 Jul 2019

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

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/movefile.html

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