Stripping outputs from dir function

I have a folder with a bunch of png images:

one.png

two.png

three.png etc.

I read the contents of the folder using the dir command:

fileList = dir;

which returns a structure, the name field of which contains:

'.'

'..'

'one.png'

'two.png'

etc.

I would like to remove the invalid entries generated by the Windows file structure. I am sure there is an easy way to do this!

Seems like it should be possible to do using cellfun, but

str = '.png';
fileList = fileList(cellfun(@contains str, fileList.name));

is invalid.

Creating a loop and using contains seems inefficient, but I don't have too many files:

for ii = 1:length(fileList)
idx(ii) = contains('.png',fileList(ii).name);
end

bizarrely returns idx = 1 0 0 0...

Interestingly, the contains command appears to not work as I expect:

contains('.png','one.png')

ans =

  logical

   0

which explains why my loop approach doesn't work...

This is a problem I face regularly, so any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

fileList = dir('*.png')

Answer 2

[big ted]

You're kidding me?! I swear I've tried this before with no luck as I couldn't get dir to return an output to a variable if I also provided inputs.

Embarassing, but thanks!

[Steven Lord]

You were likely calling dir in its command form.

dir *.png

You can't specify outputs in command form. For that you need function form, but that also requires you to wrap inputs that you want to pass into the function as char vectors using single quotes.

Q = dir('*.png')

See this documentation page for more information.