Redirection using Unix 'ls' list command

Hi,

I quite often use the following command in PC Matlab (as opposed to running Matlab in Unix environment):

!ls *mat > temp.txt;

or

system('ls *mat > temp.txt');

which lists all .mat files, creates a text file, and saves the data file names, one on each line, into the text file. This is very nice.

The thing is that the above command only works on my machine for some reason. I recently found out that none of my coworkers can execute the command although they have exact OS, Matlab version, etc.

I had to modify my scripts using 'dir' or 'diary' instead of 'ls >' for them.

Does anybody have any idea?

Thanks in advance,

Eric

[Andrew Newell]

It works for me on a Mac with OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard). What goes wrong when you do it?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You probably have something like the unix tools installed, or mingw .

! sends the following command to the system shell for the system to process. The command is not processed by Matlab at all. The same with system(). The Matlab version does not matter for this question.

Using command/function duality, you could write a Matlab function named "ls" that did this kind of listing and even looked for the '>' to know where to write the output.

ls *.mat > file.txt

is valid Matlab syntax, meaning

ls('*.mat', '>', 'file.txt')

Answer 2

[Kaustubha Govind]

The bang(!) operator and system command essentially redirect the command to the system shell - is it likely that you have a Windows utility installed that defines 'ls'? You can test this by typing 'ls' at your Windows command prompt.