[matlab] How to get all files under a specific directory in MATLAB?

I need to get all those files under D:\dic and loop over them to further process individually.

Does MATLAB support this kind of operations?

It can be done in other scripts like PHP,Python...

This question is related to matlab file recursion file-io directory

The answer is


With little modification but almost similar approach to get the full file path of each sub folder

dataFolderPath = 'UCR_TS_Archive_2015/';

dirData = dir(dataFolderPath);      %# 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(dataFolderPath,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(dataFolderPath,subDirs{iDir});    %# Get the subdirectory path
    getAllFiles = dir(nextDir);
    for k = 1:1:size(getAllFiles,1)
        validFileIndex = ~ismember(getAllFiles(k,1).name,{'.','..'});
        if(validFileIndex)
            filePathComplete = fullfile(nextDir,getAllFiles(k,1).name);
            fprintf('The Complete File Path: %s\n', filePathComplete);
        end
    end
end  

This answer does not directly answer the question but may be a good solution outside of the box.

I upvoted gnovice's solution, but want to offer another solution: Use the system dependent command of your operating system:

tic
asdfList = getAllFiles('../TIMIT_FULL/train');
toc
% Elapsed time is 19.066170 seconds.

tic
[status,cmdout] = system('find ../TIMIT_FULL/train/ -iname "*.wav"');
C = strsplit(strtrim(cmdout));
toc
% Elapsed time is 0.603163 seconds.

Positive:

  • Very fast (in my case for a database of 18000 files on linux).
  • You can use well tested solutions.
  • You do not need to learn or reinvent a new syntax to select i.e. *.wav files.

Negative:

  • You are not system independent.
  • You rely on a single string which may be hard to parse.

You're looking for dir to return the directory contents.

To loop over the results, you can simply do the following:

dirlist = dir('.');
for i = 1:length(dirlist)
    dirlist(i)
end

This should give you output in the following format, e.g.:

name: 'my_file'
date: '01-Jan-2010 12:00:00'
bytes: 56
isdir: 0
datenum: []

You can use regexp or strcmp to eliminate . and .. Or you could use the isdir field if you only want files in the directory, not folders.

list=dir(pwd);  %get info of files/folders in current directory
isfile=~[list.isdir]; %determine index of files vs folders
filenames={list(isfile).name}; %create cell array of file names

or combine the last two lines:

filenames={list(~[list.isdir]).name};

For a list of folders in the directory excluding . and ..

dirnames={list([list.isdir]).name};
dirnames=dirnames(~(strcmp('.',dirnames)|strcmp('..',dirnames)));

From this point, you should be able to throw the code in a nested for loop, and continue searching each subfolder until your dirnames returns an empty cell for each subdirectory.


This is a handy function for getting filenames, with the specified format (usually .mat) in a root folder!

    function filenames = getFilenames(rootDir, format)
        % Get filenames with specified `format` in given `foler` 
        %
        % Parameters
        % ----------
        % - rootDir: char vector
        %   Target folder
        % - format: char vector = 'mat'
        %   File foramt

        % default values
        if ~exist('format', 'var')
            format = 'mat';
        end

        format = ['*.', format];
        filenames = dir(fullfile(rootDir, format));
        filenames = arrayfun(...
            @(x) fullfile(x.folder, x.name), ...
            filenames, ...
            'UniformOutput', false ...
        );
    end

In your case, you can use the following snippet :)

filenames = getFilenames('D:/dic/**');
for i = 1:numel(filenames)
    filename = filenames{i};
    % do your job!
end

I don't know a single-function method for this, but you can use genpath to recurse a list of subdirectories only. This list is returned as a semicolon-delimited string of directories, so you'll have to separate it using strread, i.e.

dirlist = strread(genpath('/path/of/directory'),'%s','delimiter',';')

If you don't want to include the given directory, remove the first entry of dirlist, i.e. dirlist(1)=[]; since it is always the first entry.

Then get the list of files in each directory with a looped dir.

filenamelist=[];
for d=1:length(dirlist)
    % keep only filenames
    filelist=dir(dirlist{d});
    filelist={filelist.name};

    % remove '.' and '..' entries
    filelist([strmatch('.',filelist,'exact');strmatch('..',filelist,'exact'))=[];
    % or to ignore all hidden files, use filelist(strmatch('.',filelist))=[];

    % prepend directory name to each filename entry, separated by filesep*
    for f=1:length(filelist)
        filelist{f}=[dirlist{d} filesep filelist{f}];
    end

    filenamelist=[filenamelist filelist];
end

filesep returns the directory separator for the platform on which MATLAB is running.

This gives you a list of filenames with full paths in the cell array filenamelist. Not the neatest solution, I know.


I used the code mentioned in this great answer and expanded it to support 2 additional parameters which I needed in my case. The parameters are file extensions to filter on and a flag indicating whether to concatenate the full path to the name of the file or not.

I hope it is clear enough and someone will finds it beneficial.

function fileList = getAllFiles(dirName, fileExtension, appendFullPath)

  dirData = dir([dirName '/' fileExtension]);      %# Get the data for the current directory
  dirWithSubFolders = dir(dirName);
  dirIndex = [dirWithSubFolders.isdir];  %# Find the index for directories
  fileList = {dirData.name}';  %'# Get a list of the files
  if ~isempty(fileList)
    if appendFullPath
      fileList = cellfun(@(x) fullfile(dirName,x),...  %# Prepend path to files
                       fileList,'UniformOutput',false);
    end
  end
  subDirs = {dirWithSubFolders(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, fileExtension, appendFullPath)];  %# Recursively call getAllFiles
  end

end

Example for running the code:

fileList = getAllFiles(dirName, '*.xml', 0); %#0 is false obviously

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