Returning both chosen and not chosen elements

Hello, I currently have a popup list where I can choose the filenames of files that I want to manually do something with. I am able to use the indices to returned from listdlg to find the names of the files that I want to work with, however; I need the output to also include the NaN's for the files that I did not choose. For example if I chose the first and third element in the list I would want manual_val = ['name of file 1' 'NaN' 'name of file 2']. This is what I have so far!

%% Select folder with all the data in it

if exist('dataDir')~=1

dataDir = uigetdir(pwd);

end

%looks for any files ending in .out

dataFiles = dir([dataDir, '/*.csv']);

%get all file names from the chosen folder

fname_total = [];

for k = 1:length(dataFiles)

fname = dataFiles(k).name;

fname_total = [fname_total; fname];

end

fname_total = cellstr(fname_total);

%Choose graphs for manual entry

manual = input('Are there any graphs you want to input manually? ');

if manual == 1

manual_idx = listdlg('PromptString', 'Choose Files to Analyze', ...

'ListString',fname_total,'SelectionMode','multiple');

manual_val = fname_total(manual_idx);

else

manual_val = {'none'};

end

Answer 1

[Voss]

This will create a variable fname_out, which is a cell array whose length is the number of .csv files located in the specified directory and each element of which is a file name if that file was selected in the listdlg or 'NaN' if not.

(If you no longer need manual_val you can remove it or rename fname_out to manual_val, i.e., it wasn't clear whether what you want to do is meant to replace what you already have or to supplement it.)

%% Select folder with all the data in it
if exist('dataDir')~=1
    dataDir = uigetdir(pwd);
end
% looks for any files ending in .csv
dataFiles = dir([dataDir, '/*.csv']);

fname_total = {dataFiles.name}; % this is easier than building a cell array of file names in a loop

%Choose graphs for manual entry
manual = input('Are there any graphs you want to input manually? ');
if manual == 1
    manual_idx = listdlg('PromptString', 'Choose Files to Analyze', ...
            'ListString',fname_total,'SelectionMode','multiple');
    manual_val = fname_total(manual_idx);
else
    manual_idx = [];
    manual_val = {'none'};
end

fname_out = cell(size(fname_total));
fname_out(:) = {'NaN'};
fname_out(manual_idx) = fname_total(manual_idx);

Answer 2

[Adam Danz]

Adapt this to suit your needs

list = {'Red','Yellow','Blue',...

'Green','Orange','Purple'};

[indx,tf] = listdlg('ListString',list);

selection = repmat("NaN",size(list));

selection(indx) = list(indx)

% RESULTS after selecting 2nd and 3rd options

selection =

1×6 string array

"NaN" "Yellow" "Blue" "NaN" "NaN" "NaN"