A question about list folder contents with dir

Hi,

I used uigetdir and dir to list all subfolders with the following code:

path_dir=uigetdir('C:\Documents','Select a folder');
list_folder=dir(path_dir);
allFolder_list={list_folder.name};

But the names in the list have two dot files, which don't exist actually in the folder. What are they and how to remove them?

[xiaobo wu]

Thank you all for the answers! They are helpful!

Answer 1

[Dyuman Joshi]

This notation is used in filesystems (and anywhere they are implemented/used) -

. refers to the current directory/folder.

.. refers to the parent directory/folder. This can also be used to access the parent directory/folder.

(search for dot dot on this webpage - https://in.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_prog/matlab-operators-and-special-characters.html)

For example, if your directory is C:\Users\Bob, . refers to C:\Users\Bob and .. refers to C:\Users.

To remove them -

d=dir;
d=d(~ismember({d.name},{'.','..'}));

[Image Analyst]

Years ago I made the suggestion to them to have additional inputs to dir to list files only and folders only. You can too -- just give it a star rating at the bottom of the help entry for dir. I just did it again. I can't believe it's taking them so long to implement this simple option but it depends on how many people are asking for it.

[Walter Roberson]

Note that

d = dir;
d = d(~[d.isfolder]);

would remove . and .. and all folders, leaving only regular files.