Listing files in an arbitrarily named and deep tree

Hey all,

I would like to list all the .avi files in all levels of depth of subdirectories, starting from a parent path. The naming and the level of depth of the directories are arbitrary.

For example, if I give C:\banana\ as a parentpath, with the following structure:

C:\banana\apple.avi

C:\banana\pear\kiwi\banana.avi

C:\banana\orange\kiwi.avi

I would like to get all the paths to the above mentioned avis. From what I understand from the documentation there is no built-in function which gives me this functionality.

genpath seems quite promising though, in that it gives me all the directories in all levels of depth starting from a parent path.

The downside is that it gives me a string, in which all the paths are separated by a semi-colon.

I guess I have to combine the functionality of genpath and ls. I would have to make a list from the string given by genpath, turn it into an array of strings which would in turn be put in ls through the use of a for-loop.

I can than evaluate the resulting ls lists on the presence of avi's.

This solution however doesn't feel as straightforward as it could be. Is there a functionality of MATLAB I have overlooked?

Any suggestions are much appreciated!

Answer 1

[Jan]

Please take the time to look in the FEX. It is very likely that you find solutions for standard problems:

• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/32993-lsmod
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/32226-recursive-directory-listing-enhanced-rdir
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/32036-dirwalk-walk-the-directory-tree
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/24567-searchfile
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/2118-getfilenames-m
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/21791-search-files-recursively-dir2
• http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/15505-recursive-dir

There are further submissions. It seems like recursive directory scans and progressbars are the most famous tasks in the FEX.

[Bert]

I've been quite cautious about using FEX in my project, because I feel the reliability of these algorithms cannot be guaranteed.

I guess I have to overcome my 'fear' of FEX.

Judging from the amount of proposed algorithms, I would think that Mathworks might want to look into adding this functionality to MATLAB.

Answer 2

[Matt Tearle]

Looks like you're on a Windows system, so try:

[~,flist] = system('dir *.avi /B/S')

You may want to cellstr the result.

ETA: Actually, don't use cellstr. flist is in the form of a single line (with \n characters in it). So use regexp instead:

fileList = regexp(flist,'\n','split');

Note that the last entry will be blank, so

fileList(end) = [];

[Bert]

Thanks for your reply.

I tried using your solution as follows:

pathName = uigetdir;

command = ['dir ',pathname,'\ *.avi /B/S'];

[~,flist] = system(command);

fileList = cellstr(flist);

However, I get the following string in fileList: The system cannot find the file specified.

[Matt Tearle]

A couple of things: make sure you're using pathName (with the capital N) to make the command, and get rid of the space between the \ and the *.avi. But also I didn't notice the format that flist has, which means that cellstr won't work. See edit for solution.