Find specific files based on sections of file name

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!

[Robert]

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

Answer 1

[Kris Fedorenko]

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

[Robert]

Great, thanks Kris!

[Coco]

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]

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

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