{"id":9667,"date":"2018-04-27T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T13:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/pick\/?p=9667"},"modified":"2018-04-23T17:37:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-23T21:37:03","slug":"dir-tab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/pick\/2018\/04\/27\/dir-tab\/","title":{"rendered":"Dir Tab"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n <\/p>\n

Sean<\/a>‘s pick this week is dirtab(in)<\/a> by Julian<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

<\/introduction><\/p>\n

Do you ever need to scrape the files in a directory and figure out how to parse them? If you have, you’ve probably come across the dir<\/tt><\/a> command. While dir<\/tt> works, it’s frustrating because you get back an array of structs, that, in releases since R2013b, would be better served by a table. I’ve found that I now pretty much just always call struct2table<\/tt><\/a> on the output. See Loren’s Blog Post<\/a> on this topic.\n <\/p>\n

This is what Julian’s file does, but he goes one step further and converts the date to a datetime<\/tt><\/a> rather than date number and removes those pesky “.” and “..”s from every listed directory. Another bit of extra work saved.\n <\/p>\n

dirtab(pwd)<\/pre>\n
ans =\r\n  4×7 table\r\n                  folder                        name           ext              date            bytes    isdir     datenum  \r\n    __________________________________    ________________    ______    ____________________    _____    _____    __________\r\n    'C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\'    'dirtab'            '.m'      23-Apr-2018 15:35:22    3776     false    7.3717e+05\r\n    'C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\'    'license'           '.txt'    23-Apr-2018 15:57:12    1306     false    7.3717e+05\r\n    'C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\'    'mainDirTab'        '.m'      23-Apr-2018 17:32:53    2154     false    7.3717e+05\r\n    'C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\'    'wordpress_html'    ''        23-Apr-2018 17:33:13       0     true     7.3717e+05\r\n<\/pre>\n
However, since 18a came out, fullfile<\/tt><\/a> now works with strings<\/tt><\/a> (my favorite 18a feature!); I’ve typically gone a step further and converted the file parts to strings and added the full file path for easy opening.\n   <\/p>\n
D = dirtab(pwd);\r\nSD = varfun(@convertCharsToStrings, D);\r\nSD.Properties.VariableNames = D.Properties.VariableNames;\r\nSD.fullfilepath = fullfile(SD.folder, SD.name + SD.ext);\r\nSD.datenum = []<\/pre>\n
SD =\r\n  4×7 table\r\n                  folder                        name           ext              date            bytes    isdir                      fullfilepath                  \r\n    __________________________________    ________________    ______    ____________________    _____    _____    ________________________________________________\r\n    \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\\"    \"dirtab\"            \".m\"      23-Apr-2018 15:35:22    3776     false    \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\dirtab.m\"      \r\n    \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\\"    \"license\"           \".txt\"    23-Apr-2018 15:57:12    1306     false    \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\license.txt\"   \r\n    \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\\"    \"mainDirTab\"        \".m\"      23-Apr-2018 17:32:53    2154     false    \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\mainDirTab.m\"  \r\n    \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\\"    \"wordpress_html\"    \"\"        23-Apr-2018 17:33:13       0     true     \"C:\\Documents\\MATLAB\\potw\\dirtab\\wordpress_html\"\r\n<\/pre>\n
Comments<\/a><\/h3>\n
Do you have other requirements you’d like to see in dir?<\/p>\n
Give it a try and let us know what you think here<\/a> or leave a comment<\/a> for Julian.\n   <\/p>\n