Applying function only to certain files in directory

Hi, I have the following code, which applies the function 'load_nii' to files from the current directory which I select manually with the variables k and l:

currentFolder = pwd;
listing = dir;
allDirNames = { listing.name };
dirLA =~ [ listing.isdir ];
dirLA(1:2) = 0;
dirNames = allDirNames(dirLA);

% set k, l to choose which files to convert

k = 3;
l = 182;

% convert Niftis to Mat-Files

for idx = k:l

    foo(idx) = load_nii(allDirNames{idx});

    betas{idx-(k-1)} = foo(idx).img;

end

What I want however is that the function load_nii is automatically applied to all files which start with certain strings (e.g. "results"), such that I don't have to set the variables k and l manually. How can I do that?

Thanks

[Guillaume]

Not answering the question since it's already been answered, but commenting on your code:

dirLA(1:2) = 0;

I presume this is to remove the '.' and '..' that matlab stupidly returns. This assumes that these two directories are always the first two in the list. This is a dangerous assumption to make. The listing is returned alphabetically so any directory that starts with any of !"#$%&'()*+,- will appear before the . and ... You may not have such directories, but they are allowed by most OSes.

Much safer is not to rely on any ordering and use

dirLA(ismember(allDirNames, {'.', '..'})) = false;

[dpb]

Just a note that if use the name search then the directories won't show up altho the extra pair of suspenders besides the belt never hurts...

[Guillaume]

Oh yes, with the solution proposed, there's no need to filter the directories anyway.

My comment was more generic in case such code (directory listing) is used for something else where file filtering does not apply.

I don't know why mathworks decided to return these two useless entries other than for the sake of matching the antiquated behaviour of dos dir.

[MiauMiau]

yep I figured that...strange indeed that it is implemented like this, but my code works fine now, thanks for all the help

Answer 1

[dbmn]

The simplest solution is, when you know a priori what your files are called. In that case use wildcards with *

 listing = dir('results*.m');

[dpb]

And, write the function such that you pass that "magic string" to the function as a user-specified variable instead of hardcoding it into the function.

[MiauMiau]

Thanks, very helpful!:)