Question

I’m trying to save all the files in a directory as an array of strings, like this:

files = {'hello.gdf'; 'hello2.gdf'...; ... 'etc.gdf'}

Since I have many directories, I want to do this automatically. This is my code:

gdffiles = dir(fullfile('D:', 'subject', '01', '*.gdf'))
for i=1:size(gdffiles)
    files(i) = gdffiles(i).name;
end

I want to assign to files the name of the gdf files found, but I get this message:

??? Subscripted assignment dimension mismatch.

Error in ==> getFiles at 3
files(i) = gdffiles(i).name;

What am I doing wrong? Thanks!

Answer 1

The reason for error:

You try to assign files in the i-th place a string (char array) gdffiles(i).name. However, you are using an array-element assignment (round parenthesis ()). Therefore, you get an error: You can only assign a single char using files(i).

Possible solutions:

1. You should assign to files using curly braces – since files is a cell array:

   files{i} = gdffiles(i).name;
   

2. You can achieve the same result without the loop by:

   files = { gdffiles(:).name };