How to change .txt format automatically into .m format

Dear all:

I have a lot of .txt files which I want to change them automatically into .m format files, in order for some later processing in Matlab.

Any guide will be very appreciated.

[Are Mjaavatten]

You can do this by sending the appropriate command to the operating system. In Windows:

 !ren *.txt *.m

will rename all *.txt files in your working directory to *.m

Answer 1

[Sibghat]

try the following...

% Define the directory containing the .txt files
directory = 'path/to/your/files/';

% List all .txt files in the directory
txtFiles = dir(fullfile(directory, '*.txt'));

% Loop through each .txt file
for i = 1:numel(txtFiles)
    % Get the file name and extension
    [~, filename, ext] = fileparts(txtFiles(i).name);
    
    % Generate the new file name with .m extension
    newFilename = [filename '.m'];
    
    % Rename the file
    movefile(fullfile(directory, txtFiles(i).name), fullfile(directory, newFilename));
    
    % Display confirmation message
    disp(['Converted ' txtFiles(i).name ' to ' newFilename]);
end

It will search the folder for text files and will change the format to M-file...

Answer 2

[Bhupesh Soni]

!ren *.txt *.m

[Chirayu Aggarwal]

we have to what with this?

[Una Schneck]

if you enter this in matlab's command line then the text files in your currect directory will convert to .m files

[Sergio]

@Bhupesh Soni

in MATLAB 2023b:

!ren *.txt *.m

/bin/bash: line 1: ren: command not found

[Alexander]

!ren is a windows command. If you use another operating system use the appropriate command, e.g. move.

[Walter Roberson]

@Alexander

The MacOS and Linux equivalent

!mv *.txt *.m

would try to expand all (existing) files ending in .txt and all files ending in .m, as-if they had been typed into the command -- for example as-if it had been entered

!mv file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt rename_my_files.m rename_helper.m

the last of the .m files would then be interpreted as the target file to move everything else to... so first file1.txt would be moved to rename_helper.m then file2.txt would be moved to rename_helper.m and so on, until finally rename_my_files.m would be renamed to rename_helper.m -- leaving you with just rename_helper.m with content the old rename_my_files.m

Unfortunately, the unix way of doing this rename is notably more messy.

[Alexander]

Thank you for this explanation. To be honest, the time I used unix is more than 30 years ago. I only remembered that "ren" is not a c-shell command. Hopefully is annoyed by my comment.

Answer 3

[Younes Oudich]

I think the easiest way is to use the "movefile" command with a for loop

for i=1:N_files % number of files
    movefile(['file_number' str2num(i) '.txt'], ['file_number' str2num(i) '.m']) ; %This will convert them directly from .txt to .m and it can also be applied to other extensions
end