How do I get Matlab to return a matrix with all the file names in a folder?

I need to analyze a folder of .txt files. I want to create a for loop that analyzes one file in the folder at a time and organizes their data into a matrix of all the files data. I want the user to select the folder they would like to analyze. I tried this code.

F = dir(uigetdir('*.dat'))

But when I checked the names that it was returning, it was returning '.' for all of the files names. How do I make it return their real names, and why is it not reading the correct file names?

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

This should work:

F = dir(uigetdir('*.m'))
names = {F(:).name}

names will be a cell array with all file names with the .m extension in the folder.

NB: Changed to .m since I don't have any .dat files. If they have a .txt extension, you should be using that.

[Alex Mussell]

That worked, I don't know why I did not see that. Thank you.