Sorting the name field in dir command

Hi all,

I have a problem when I'm trying to get the content of a folder. It gets the name of the files but not in order. For example, the files starts with X- where the X is a number from 1 to 320. My code gets the name's file in the order 1, 10, 100, etc... and I need it in order 1,2,3,4...320

This is my code

myFolder = 'C:\Users\U95511\Dropbox\UPF\Roberto Verino\Advantrack\Test15-130313\P12\A3\Results';
if ~isdir(myFolder)
  errorMessage = sprintf('Error: The following folder does not exist:\n%s', myFolder);
  uiwait(warndlg(errorMessage));
  return;
end
filePattern = fullfile(myFolder, '*.xls');
xlsFiles = dir(filePattern);

I need to order the struct xlsFiles.

I tried with W=sort(xlsFiles.name) but it creates an array instead of another struct ordered.

Thanks for the help.

BR,

Raúl.

Answer 1

[Jonathan Sullivan]

[~,ind]=sort({xlsFiles.name});
W = xlsFiles(ind);

[Raúl]

Thanks Jonathan,

But it continues unsorted...

[Andre Guerra]

That did the trick for me! Thanks a bunch!

Answer 2

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

f= dir(filePattern); 
xlsfiles={f.name}
xlsfiles=sort(xlsfiles)

[Raúl]

Thanks Azzi,

It also creates an array instead of a struct.

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

yourfolder= dir(filePattern); 
xlsfiles={yourfolder.name}
[~,idx]=sort(xlsfiles)
new_folder=yourfolder(idx)

Answer 3

[Stephen23]

You could download my FEX submission natsortfiles:

>> S = dir('*.txt');
>> S.name
ans =
    '1.txt'
ans =
    '10.txt'
ans =
    '2.txt'
>> S = natsortfiles(S); % alphanumeric sort by filename
>> S.name
ans =
    '1.txt'
ans =
    '2.txt'
ans =
    '10.txt'

Answer 4

[Dan]

Most of the time you don't need to actually sort the names. You can use the index to control the order in which a loop will access the names. This code works for me on version 2020b.

    filePattern = '*.*';
    files = dir(filePattern);
    [~,idx] = sort(string({files.name}),2,'ascend');
    for fileLoop=idx
    % do something with files like print the names in order
        fprintf('File: %d, %s', fileLoop, files(fileLoop).name)
    end