uigetfile for multiple type problem

Hi:

I want to use uigetfile to pick files, the files needed have two types:

1. 'abc*.mat'
2. '*.dat'

but when I use command:

uigetfile({'abc*.mat','*.dat'})

only the type 'abc*.mat' is shown in the file selection window,

when I use command:

uigetfile({'*.dat','abc*.mat'})

only the type '*.dat' is shown in the file selection window.

these means that, my command only shows the 1st type.

is there any mistake with my command?

Thanks!

Yu

Answer 1

[dpb]

Gotta' have good eyes in reading the documentation...use

uigetfile({'abc*.mat';'*.dat'})

instead--a column instead of row vector of cell strings. A second column is interpreted as an optional file descriptor.

Also NB: only one selection criterion is active at a time; they're sequential lines in a dropdown box so when you select one, the other goes away. This may or may not be desired behavior. Unfortunately if the latter, even with 'MultiSelect','on' it will cancel the other file in the already selected list so whether having more than one file type in the dropdown box is even worth doing or not appears questionable...

[Yu Li]

Thanks for your reply.

but in my side, no matter use ',', ir ';', the behavior looks like the same.

Yu

[Adam Danz]

What does that mean?

Have you tried running dpb's line of code? It does exactly what you're asking it to do.

[Yu Li]

Yes I tried.

what I want to display both together, but it only display one, after I use ';' instead of ','

[Adam Danz]

Check out the last paragraph dpb wrote. You can only display one at a time. If you want the user to see all files, one option is to not specify the filter spec. Then you could write a few lines of code that detects the file extension of the file(s) selected and conditionally throw an error if the user chose an undesired file.

[dpb]

Unfortunately, that's just the behavior of the function; to see the other click the dropdown box in the file list...but, "that's as good as it gets!" with that particular UI.

"I don't do windows!" so I don't know if that mimics the MS UI behavior or whether it's an artifact of how Mathworks wrapped the Win32 API calls inside the function, but that's the way it works.

Using ";" instead of "," between the file type strings does let you look at the two selectively, and the shown files dialog changes to reflect that, but it simply won't show both at once with this functrion.

Sad, but true...

[Yu Li]

Ok... I see a selection at the bottom right of the window... thank you.

I'm contacting Mathworks Technical Support to see if there is a perfect solution as I expected (display both together), will post here once I have it.

Bests,

Yu

[Walter Roberson]

uigetfile() always invokes the system file browser, and only showing one file type at a time is common for system file browsers.

[dpb]

And, uicontrol won't allow the putgetfile style so appears TMW hasn't left any hooks to do anything else.

It seems to me the wrapper function in CVF Fortran let one do that but I've not reinstalled the compiler since the system crash as the installer won't run under 64-bit OS even though the command-line compiler will--but it takes setting a myriad of system variables to make linking work correctly and I've not taken the time to do so, so can't check...and I'm not enough of a masochist to go do it at the root level without the interface functions just for a Forum maybe question that doesn't have direct benefit to the OP! :)

I guess I also wasn't aware of that quirk...seems like a really rude implementation indeed; have to agree w/ Yu on that.