Hello, I have a cell array with the list of files I would like to delete. However I would not like to use a for loop to loop through each file to delete it.

Files - A cell array of size 1x3 with file names to be deleted.

Files =

1×3 cell array

{'1.txt'} {'2.txt'} {'3.txt'}

Working Code :

for i = 1:length(Files)

delete(string(Files(i)));

end

However, I would like to write a single line of code without for loop to achieve the same.

Note: Every run of my code can have different number of files to be deleted. So hardcoding with the command

delete 1.txt 2.txt 3.txt

will not be helpful.

Answer 1

[Voss]

Pass the file names as arguments to delete(). Since the names are already in a cell array, this is easy:

delete(Files{:})

Demonstration:

% make some .txt files:
writematrix(1,'1.txt')
writematrix(2,'2.txt')
writematrix(3,'3.txt')

% get info about the .txt files:
fn = dir('*.txt') % 3 files found

fn = 3x1 struct array with fields:
    name
    folder
    date
    bytes
    isdir
    datenum

% construct a cell array with the file names:
Files = fullfile({fn.folder},{fn.name});

% delete the files:
delete(Files{:})

% confirm that all three files have been deleted:
fn = dir('*.txt') % 0 files found

fn = 

  0x1 empty struct array with fields:

    name
    folder
    date
    bytes
    isdir
    datenum

[Krishna Ghanakota]

Works great ! Thanks.

[Voss]

You're welcome!

Answer 2

[Chuguang Pan]

maybe you can use cellfun.

Files={'1.txt','2.txt','3.txt'};
cellfun(@delete,Files)

[Krishna Ghanakota]

I guess this is the same as the for loop. The documentation says

"cellfun(func,C) applies the function func to the contents of each cell of cell array C, one cell at a time."

I am looking at a time critical application and cannot afford looping of any sort.

Thank you.

[DGM]

I doubt that a small loop is going to be meaningfully slow compared to actually making changes to files.

Why not construct a command string and pass that to the system?

% this will probably break if filenames have spaces or other issues
files = {'1.txt','2.txt','3.txt'};
comstr = sprintf(repmat('%s ',[1 numel(files)]),files{:});
system(['rm ' comstr]);

I mean it sure doesn't sound like a great idea, but if that's the road we're on ...

[Walter Roberson]

You need to account for special characters in file names.

% this will probably break if filenames have spaces or other issues
files = {'1.txt','2.txt','3.txt'};
comstr = sprintf(repmat('"%s" ',[1 numel(files)]),files{:});
system(['rm ' comstr]);

[Krishna Ghanakota]

I get the following response

'rm' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.