Rename files within multiple subfolders (within multiple subfolders) to the name of the first subfolder.

Hi!

I am new to matlab and have a parentfolder with multiple subfolders with names such as C1_sub1_I, C2_sub2_M etc. Within each subfolder I have another subfolder with some files. I want to extract log files from each subfolder (within each subfolder) and rename them to the name of the first subfolder (C1_sub1_I, C2_sub2_M etc).

So the levels are: parentfolder -> subfolder with the name I want -> another folder -> my files.

I have a script to read the log files but I just cant figure out how to rename them after the first subfolder, or if its possible to delete the second subfile first and then rename them.

This is my script to load the log files using a function (importPresentationLog), which works fine:

%import files:
dir_path = fullfile('C:\Users\johan\Skrivbord\test'); 
mydir=dir(fullfile(dir_path,'**/*middle.log')); 
for i = 1:numel(mydir);
   currentFile = fullfile(mydir(i).folder,mydir(i).name);
   [mydir(i).name, out1] = importPresentationLog(currentFile); 
end

Would very much appreciate some help! Thank you in advance!!

Maria

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

You just need to break down the mydir.folder into its different folders and use the one before last to rename your file.:

dir_path = fullfile('C:\Users\johan\Skrivbord\test'); 
mydir = dir(fullfile(dir_path, '**/*middle.log')); 
for i = 1:numel(mydir);
   folders = strsplit(mydir(i).folder, filesep);  %split path into individual folders
   newname = [folders{end-1}, '.log'];
   movefile(fullfile(mydir(i).folder, mydir(i).name), newname)); %rename file
end

[Maria123]

Wow this works so well, thank you!!!!

Answer 2

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

Why not do something like:

target_dir =  fullfile('C:\Users\johan\Skrivbord\test');
source_root =  fullfile('C:\Users\johan\Skrivbord\test');
cd(source_root)
dFiles = dir('.');
for iFile = 1:numel(dFiles),
  if your_file_matching_condition
      target_name = % if you want some specific format of the file to copy to
      movefile(dFiles(iFile).name,fullfile(target_dir,target_name))
  elseif isdir(dFiles(iFile))
      cd(dFiles(iFile).name)
      dF2 = dir('.');
      for iF2 = 1:numel(dF2),
          if your_file_matching_condition
              target_name = % if you want some specific format of the file to copy to
              movefile(dF2(iF2).name,fullfile(target_dir,target_name))
          elseif isdir(dF2(iF2))
              % Well you might put this into a function where you recursively 
              % walk down into directories, and copy the files you want.
          end
      end
      cd('..')
  end
end

That's a bit clunky to do by yourself, there are a couple of recursive dir-functions at the file exchange: Recursive-dir

A couple of those, (dir2, dirrec, recdir?) have the capability to give you files matching a regular-expression-pattern with path and all - that would be much easier to use, call, lets say dir2 loop over the output and copy/move the matching files one by one.

This is also a task best suited for unix find, (and something similar exist in MS-powertools?):

find ./ -name \*middle.log -print0 | xargs -0 cp -p /Users/johan/Skrivbord/test

HTH

[Guillaume]

recursive dir has been part of matlab since R2016b, no need for the file exchange