loading multiple .mat files from current directory

Hi,

Is there a way to load all the .mat files together into the base workspace?

files = dir('*.mat') gives a structure having details of the .mat files in the directory. But with load files(1).name (may be using a loop), I am not able to load a .mat file from the current folder to base workspace.

Any help is appreciated. Vijay

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

evalin('base', ['load ', files(K).name])

Warning: using this method is prone to clobbering variables in the base workspace, as it does not validate the contents of the .mat file before loading.

[Vijay]

Thank you very much. I just want to load the files. I am using them in a function. Just now, I have found out similar solution as follows,

files = dir('*.mat');
for i = 1:numel(files)
    load(files(i).name);
end

[Dave Lai]

Hi, can u explain more clearly about what is 'load(files(i).name)' mean? can u give an example? thanks a lot !

[Walter Roberson]

The output of dir() is a struct (data structure) array with a number of fields, including the important field name . The name of the first file returned is available through files(1).name and the name of the second file is available through files(2).name and so on. These are all character vectors. You can pass load() a character vector to tell it which file to load.

[Areej Nayab]

can you please tell name is a key word or what

[Walter Roberson]

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/dir.html#bsnswnx-1-listing

dir() returns a struct array. In current releases, that struct contains fields named

bytes
date
datenum
folder
isfolder
name

In terms of the MATLAB language, these are not considered keywords: they are just what the struct fields are named.