How to display names after regexp? - matlab

Question

I am trying to find all files in a directory that match 'hello'. i have the following code:
fileData = dir();
m_file_idx = 1;
fileNames = {fileData.name};
index = regexp(filenames,'\w*hello\w*','match') ;
inFiles = fileNames(~cellfun(#isempty,index));
Ex. if my directory has 3 files with the word hello in it, inFiles returns me
inFiles =
[1x23 char] [1x26 char] [1x25 char]
instead i want inFiles to return me the name of the file,ex thisishello.m,hiandhello.txt
how can i do this in a simple way?

Answer 1

This code:
fileData = dir();
fileNames = {fileData.name};
disp('The full directory...')
disp(fileNames)
index = regexp(fileNames,'\w*hello\w*','match');
inFiles = fileNames(~cellfun(#isempty,index));
disp('Print out the file names')
inFiles{:}
generates this output:
>> script
The full directory...
Columns 1 through 6
'.' '..' 'andsevenyears.txt' 'fourscore.txt' 'hello1.txt' 'hello2.txt'
Column 7
'script.m'
Print out the file names
ans =
hello1.txt
ans =
hello2.txt
To me it looks as if you were having some issues with understanding cell arrays. Here's a specific tutorial that works through them. (jerad's link also looks like a good resource)

Answer 2

I think what's going on here is that when an element of a cell array is longer than a certain length (appears to be 19 characters for strings), matlab doesn't print the actual element, it prints a description of the content instead (in this case, "[1x23 char]").
For example:
>> names = {'1234567890123456789' 'bar' 'car'}
names =
'1234567890123456789' 'bar' 'car'
>> names = {'12345678901234567890' 'bar' 'car'}
names =
[1x20 char] 'bar' 'car'
celldisp might work better for your situation:
>> celldisp(names)
names{1} =
12345678901234567890
names{2} =
bar
names{3} =
car