Code to autotsort files creating temp file instead of folder - matlab

Question

In the below code I am trying to sort files based on a string within the name. I've been piecing this together with google searches and community help (I'm very new at matlab). Right now I'm getting two odd errors. First, when I try and make a folder, it creates some file (highlighted filein picture that I can't open and the wav files that should have been moved to the folder disappear.
I'm also having an issue where the code renames the first two data files moved to "01" and "01 (1)" and I have no idea why.
DirIn = 'C:\Folder\Experiment' %set incoming directory
eval(['filelist=dir(''' DirIn '/*.wav'')']) %get file list
for i = 1:length(filelist);
Filename = filelist(i).name
name = strsplit(Filename, '_');
newStr = extractBetween(name,7,8);
if strcmp(newStr,'01')
DirOut = fullfile(DirIn, '01');
mkdir DirIn DirOut
movefile(fullfile(filelist(i).folder, filelist(i).name), DirOut);
end
end

Answer 1

This should work:
DirIn = 'C:\Folder\Experiment'; %set incoming directory
filelist=dir(fullfile(DirIn, '*.wav')); %get file list
DirOut = fullfile(DirIn, '01');
for i = 1:length(filelist);
Filename = filelist(i).name
newStr = Filename(7:8);
if strcmp(newStr,'01')
if ~exist(DirOut)
mkdir(DirOut)
end
movefile(fullfile(filelist(i).folder, filelist(i).name), DirOut);
end
end
Firstly, you don't need eval to get the file list. eval impact performance significantly. The below is what you should have done:
filelist=dir(fullfile(DirIn, '*.wav'));
You don't need strsplit or extractBetween since you only intend to extract a part of the string by indexing, i.e. the 7th and 8th characters, you may do this:
newStr = Filename(7:8);
To use variable as an input, you need to use mkdir as a function rather than console command:
mkdir(DirOut)
Lastly, a bit of optimisation. Since DirOut is constant, you can take it outside the loop. You may also want to check if DirOut has already been created to avoid the warning message and overhead in mkdir.
There is no issue with movefile.

Answer 2

Couple things go wrong, first, it is not recommended to use eval. In this case you can just create a character array to pass to dir as follows:
filelist = dir([DirIn '/*.wav'])
Then, you have a strplit that appears to do nothing, since it looks like your files don't have '_' in them, so name will just return Filename. But that is not the issue, since you are using extractBetween on the Filename.
The following does not what you think it does,
mkdir DirIn DirOut
will create two directories named DirIn and DirOut in the current working directory of Matlab. To create the directories you want, use:
mkdir(DirOut)
Since the output directory did not exist before, I suspect Matlab moved the file to the input directory, and renamed it to 01, if you manually add the extension .wav it should be one of the original files.