How to automatically concatenate several .mat files into one file?

Here is what I am trying to do:

I have these four .mat files... '20130602_SPLBRENT3_135638.mat' '20130602_SPLBRENT3_183333.mat' '20130602_SPLBRENT3_184002.mat' '20130602_SPLBRENT3_205239.mat'

I want to write perhaps a script or function that will concatenate those four files into one file with the name '20130602_SPLBRENT3_concat.mat' My goal is to be able to automate this process through Task Scheduler so that the files are concatenated once a day. As you can see, these are files from June 2.

Anyone know how I go about doing this? I am very new to Matlab so please be as detailed as possible. Thanks!

[Sean de Wolski]

How is this different than:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/77514-how-do-you-concatenate-several-mat-files-into-one

[Lianna Johnson]

I asked that question last week, and I wasn't sure what to do with the answers so I thought I would give a more detailed question. I'm very new to Matlab so I'm still trying to understand the answers I was given.

[Iain]

I think an important question is why do you want to concatenate those files?

[Walter Roberson]

Duplicates http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/77514-how-do-you-concatenate-several-mat-files-into-one

Answer 1

[Iain]

Mat files aren't easy to concatenate UNLESS they contain different variables.

The code, in that case, would be:

 load(filename1)
 load(filename2)
 load(filename3)
 load(filename4)
 save(filename)

If they have similar variables inside them, then concatenation is harder, but you can bodge it easily:

 a{1} = load(filename1);
 a{2} = load(filename2);
 a{3} = load(filename3);
 a{4} = load(filename4);
 save(filename,a)

[Walter Roberson]

Before doing the save,

a = vertcat(a{:});

Then the save would be

save(filename, '-struct', 'a');

This will only work if the variable names are exactly the same, in the same order, in all of files.

[Iain]

And if they are structures, defined in the same way...

[Walter Roberson]

load() of a .mat file returns a structure whose fieldnames are the original variable names.

But I do need to think more about what should be concatenated together. The above will probably fail because -struct in save needs scalar structures.

[Walter Roberson]

For the case of .mat files with exactly one variable name:

 t1 = load(filename1);
 t2{1} = struct2cell(t);
 t2{2} = struct2cell(load(filename2));
 t2{3} = struct2cell(load(filename3));
 t2{4} = struct2cell(load(filename4));
 fn = fieldnames(t1);
 t3.(fn{1}) = vertcat(t2{:});
 save(filename, '-struct', 't3');