Matlab: Get full path of sub-directories and files - matlab

Question

I have a directory at '../../My_Dir' relative to the Matlab working directory. This directory itself has several sub-directories in it. Each sub-directory then has several files in it.
I want to create two-dimensional array, or a matrix, of strings. Each row represents one of the sub-directories. The first column in the row is the full path to the sub-directory itself, and the other columns are the full paths to the files within that sub-directory.
Can anyone show me some code that will help me to implement this? Thank you!

Answer 1

You can first get all the sub-folders by
d = dir(pathFolder);
isub = [d(:).isdir];
subFolders = {d(isub).name}';
Note, you further need to remove . and .. from it:
subFolders(ismember(subFolders,{'.','..'})) = [];
And then get files in each of them by using (from this post):
function fileList = getAllFiles(dirName)
dirData = dir(dirName); %# Get the data for the current directory
dirIndex = [dirData.isdir]; %# Find the index for directories
fileList = {dirData(~dirIndex).name}'; %'# Get a list of the files
if ~isempty(fileList)
fileList = cellfun(#(x) fullfile(dirName,x),... %# Prepend path to files
fileList,'UniformOutput',false);
end
subDirs = {dirData(dirIndex).name}; %# Get a list of the subdirectories
validIndex = ~ismember(subDirs,{'.','..'}); %# Find index of subdirectories
%# that are not '.' or '..'
for iDir = find(validIndex) %# Loop over valid subdirectories
nextDir = fullfile(dirName,subDirs{iDir}); %# Get the subdirectory path
fileList = [fileList; getAllFiles(nextDir)]; %# Recursively call getAllFiles
end
end

Answer 2

To get the folders FULL PATH:
d = dir(baseDir);
d(~[d.isdir])= []; %Remove all non directories.
names = setdiff({d.name},{'.','..'});
filesFullPath = names;
for i=1:size(names,2)
filesFullPath{i} = fullfile(baseDir,names{1,i});
end
Matlab... "thanks" for this s...

Answer 3

As an example, let's say I have three subfolders in 'My_Dir' called 'A' (containing 'a1.txt' and 'a2.txt'), 'B' (containing 'b1.txt'), and 'C' (containing 'c1.txt', 'c2.txt', and 'c3.txt'). This will illustrate how to handle a case with different numbers of files in each subfolder...
For MATLAB versions R2016b and later, the dir function supports recursive searching, allowing us to collect a list of files like so:
dirData = dir('My_Dir\*\*.*'); % Get structure of folder contents
dirData = dirData(~[dirData.isdir]); % Omit folders (keep only files)
fileList = fullfile({dirData.folder}.', {dirData.name}.'); % Get full file paths
fileList =
6×1 cell array
'...\My_Dir\A\a1.txt'
'...\My_Dir\A\a2.txt'
'...\My_Dir\B\b1.txt'
'...\My_Dir\C\c1.txt'
'...\My_Dir\C\c2.txt'
'...\My_Dir\C\c3.txt'
As an alternative, in particular for earlier versions, this can be done using a utility I posted to the MathWorks File Exchange: dirPlus. It can be used as follows:
dirData = dirPlus('My_Dir', 'Struct', true, 'Depth', 1);
fileList = fullfile({dirData.folder}.', {dirData.name}.');
Now we can format fileList in the way you specified above. First we can use unique to get a list of unique subfolders and an index. That index can then be used with mat2cell and diff to break fileList up by subfolder into a second level of cell array encapsulation:
[dirList, index] = unique({dirData.folder}.');
outData = [dirList mat2cell(fileList, diff([index; numel(fileList)+1]))]
outData =
3×2 cell array
'...\My_Dir\A' {2×1 cell}
'...\My_Dir\B' {1×1 cell}
'...\My_Dir\C' {3×1 cell}