create a loop using regexp

I have imported a bench of text file into MATLAB using

    list_files2load = dir(fullfile(directory1,'Mod1*));

In those files (here is an example: Mod1-A-00k.txt, Mod1-A-10k.txt, Mod1-A-30k.txt; Mod1-B-00k.txt, Mod1-B-10k.txt, Mod1-B-30k.txt), I would like to pick first only the ones that end with '*00k.txt', so I do :

    a={'Mod1-A-00k.txt', 'Mod1-A-10k.txt', 'Mod1-A-30k.txt', 'Mod1-B-00k.txt', 'Mod1-B-10k.txt', 'Mod1-B-30k.txt'}
    idx=~cellfun(@isempty,regexp(a,'.+(00k.txt)\>','match'))
    b=a(idx)

Now I would like to know if it is possible with regexp to create a loop which first starts with piking the files ending with '*00k.txt' and in the second loop the files ending with '*10k.txt' and so on.

Thank you

Answer 1

[Geoff Hayes]

Nicolas - for sure you can add a loop as long as you know what to increment by at each iteration. If we assume an increment of 10 (given your pattern of 00,10,30) then we could wrap your above code in a for loop as

 for u=0:10:50

    % create the file pattern
    filePattern = sprintf('%02d',u);

    idx=~cellfun(@isempty,regexp(a,['.+(' filePattern 'k.txt)\>'],'match'));

    % if any value in logical array is one then save to b
    if any(idx)
        b=a(idx)
    end
 end

Running the above code with your a produces the following output

 b = 
    'Mod1-A-00k.txt'    'Mod1-B-00k.txt'
 b = 
    'Mod1-A-10k.txt'    'Mod1-B-10k.txt'
 b = 
    'Mod1-A-30k.txt'    'Mod1-B-30k.txt'

[Nicolas]

thank you, that's perfect.

Answer 2

[Christopher Berry]

You can do this with regular expressions, but your name requirements seem simple enough to do with dir and sprintf instead.

My suggestion would be to put the dir call inside your for loop and try something like:

for i=0:10:30
   str = sprintf('Mod1*%0dk.txt',i)
   list_files2load = dir(fullfile(directory1,str));
   %DO WORK ON FILES HERE
end

See the documenation for sprintf here:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/sprintf.html

[Nicolas]

thanks that's also really fitting what I need. thanks for the link too.