How to loop over datafiles using the sprintf function?

Hello everyone,

I have just started learning Matlab and I wrote a script for analysis which seems to work! :) Now, at the beginning of my script, I want to create a loop, to loop over all participants (46 participants, divided into 23 dyads) and conditions (2 conditions: ES and NS), using the sprintf function. I just can't seem to figure it out..

Fyi, this means that I have 4 files for every dyad (both conditions for both participants) and my files are named as follows (for clarity, I give all four):

"hyper_cleaned_SNS_003S_004L_E_ES_sub_1.set"

"hyper_cleaned_SNS_003S_004L_E_ES_sub_2.set"

"hyper_cleaned_SNS_003S_004L_E_NS_sub_1.set"

"hyper_cleaned_SNS_003S_004L_E_NS_sub_2.set"

• '003S' indicates the first subject and '004L' indicates the second subject of the dyad (so this concerns the dyad consisting of subject 3 and subject 4)
• ES/NS indicates the condition
• 'sub_1' indicates that this is the data from the first subject of the dyad ('003S') and 'sub_2' indicates that this is the data from the second subject of the dyad ('004S')

Now, I want to create a loop to loop over all dyads and both conditions (and put the rest of my code within this loop), but I get stuck (I am mainly confused because I perform the rest of my analysis separately for the participants within a dyad, but the loop has to go over the dyads and not separate participants.). This is what I have so far:

dyads = 1:23

conditions = 1:2

% number of conditions = 1:2

for i = 1:23, ii = 1:2

filename = sprintf('dyad%d_condition%d',dyads(i), conditions(ii)); % the filename I specify here must manipulate the string with filename used in pop_loadset

addpath('/Users/AlixWeidema/Dropbox/hyper_cleaned');

data_sub_A = pop_loadset('filename','hyper_cleaned_SNS_003S_004L_E_ES_sub_1.set','check','off','loadmode','info');

data_sub_B = pop_loadset('filename','hyper_cleaned_SNS_003S_004L_E_ES_sub_2.set','check','off','loadmode','info');

end

I'm sorry for all this text! Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!!

Answer 1

[Jan]

This is valid Matlab code, but it does not do, what you expect:

for i = 1:23, ii = 1:2

This is 1 loop only. ii is set to the vector [1,2] in all cases. I guess you mean:

for i = 1:23
   for ii = 1:2

Do not add a folder to Matlab's PATH only to import data. The PATH should contain only the M-files with the code. It is much saver to use absolute path names instead:

folder = '/Users/AlixWeidema/Dropbox/hyper_cleaned';
for i = 1:23
   for ii = 1:2
      filename = sprintf('dyad%d_condition%d', dyads(i), conditions(ii));
      file = fullfile(folder, filename);
      data_sub_A = pop_loadset(file, ...          

You have provided 'filename' as input of pop_loadset(). Do you really want to provide the char vector 'filename', or the variable filename? In the latter case, omit the quotes.