Octave: Load all files from specific directory

Question

I used to have Matlab and loaded all txt-files from directory "C:\folder\" into Matlab with the following code:

myFolder = 'C:\folder\';
filepattern = fullfile(myFolder, '*.txt');
files = dir(filepattern);
for i=1:length(files)
eval(['load ' myFolder,files(i).name ' -ascii']);
end

If C:\folder\ contains A.txt, B.txt, C.txt, I would then have matrices A, B and C in the workspace.

The code doesn't work in octave, maybe because of "fullfile"?. Anyway, with the following code I get matrices with the names C__folder_A, C__folder_B, C__folder_C. However, I need matrices called A, B, C.

myFolder = 'C:\folder\';
files = dir(myFolder);
for i=3:length(files)
eval(['load ' myFolder,files(i).name ' -ascii']);
end

Can you help me? Thanks, Martin

PS: The loop starts with 3 because files(1).name = . and files(2).name = ..

EDIT: I have just found a solution. It's not elegant, but it works. I just add the path in which the files are with "addpath", then I don't have to give the full name of the directory in the loop.

myFolder = 'C:\folder\';
addpath(myFolder)
files = dir(myFolder);
for i=3:length(files)
eval(['load ' files(i).name ' -ascii']);
end

Answer 1

It's usually bad design if you load files to variables which name is generated dynamically and you should load them to a cell array instead but this should work:

files = glob('C:\folder\*.txt')
for i=1:numel(files)
  [~, name] = fileparts (files{i});
  eval(sprintf('%s = load("%s", "-ascii");', name, files{i}));
endfor

Answer 2

The function scanFiles searches file names with extensions in the current dirrectory (initialPath) and subdirectories recursively. The parameter fileHandler is a function that you can use to process populated file structure (i.e. read text, load image, etc.)

Source

function scanFiles(initialPath, extensions, fileHandler)
  persistent total = 0;
  persistent depth = 0; depth++;
  initialDir = dir(initialPath);

  printf('Scanning the directory %s ...\n', initialPath);

  for idx = 1 : length(initialDir) 
    curDir = initialDir(idx);
    curPath = strcat(curDir.folder, '\', curDir.name);

    if regexp(curDir.name, "(?!(\\.\\.?)).*") * curDir.isdir
      scanFiles(curPath, extensions, fileHandler);
    elseif regexp(curDir.name, cstrcat("\\.(?i:)(?:", extensions, ")$"))
      total++;
      file = struct("name",curDir.name,
                     "path",curPath,
                     "parent",regexp(curDir.folder,'[^\\\/]*$','match'),
                     "bytes",curDir.bytes);
      fileHandler(file);
    endif
  end

  if!(--depth)
    printf('Total number of files:%d\n', total);
    total=0;
  endif
endfunction

Usage

# txt
# textFileHandlerFunc=@(file)fprintf('%s',fileread(file.path));
# scanFiles("E:\\Examples\\project\\", "txt", textFileHandlerFunc);

# images
# imageFileHandlerFunc=@(file)imread(file.path);
# scanFiles("E:\\Examples\\project\\datasets\\", "jpg|png", imageFileHandlerFunc);

# list files
fileHandlerFunc=@(file)fprintf('path=%s\nname=%s\nsize=%d bytes\nparent=%s\n\n',
               file.path,file.name,file.bytes,file.parent);
scanFiles("E:\\Examples\\project\\", "txt", fileHandlerFunc);