How to get all files under a specific directory in MATLAB?

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Update: Given that this post is quite old, and I’ve modified this utility a lot for my own use during that time, I thought I should post a new version. My newest code can be found on The MathWorks File Exchange: dirPlus.m. You can also get the source from GitHub.

I made a number of improvements. It now gives you options to prepend the full path or return just the file name (incorporated from Doresoom and Oz Radiano) and apply a regular expression pattern to the file names (incorporated from Peter D). In addition, I added the ability to apply a validation function to each file, allowing you to select them based on criteria other than just their names (i.e. file size, content, creation date, etc.).

NOTE: In newer versions of MATLAB (R2016b and later), the dir function has recursive search capabilities! So you can do this to get a list of all *.m files in all subfolders of the current folder:

dirData = dir('**/*.m');

Old code: (for posterity)

Here’s a function that searches recursively through all subdirectories of a given directory, collecting a list of all file names it finds:

function fileList = getAllFiles(dirName)

  dirData = dir(dirName);      %# Get the data for the current directory
  dirIndex = [dirData.isdir];  %# Find the index for directories
  fileList = {dirData(~dirIndex).name}';  %'# Get a list of the files
  if ~isempty(fileList)
    fileList = cellfun(@(x) fullfile(dirName,x),...  %# Prepend path to files
                       fileList,'UniformOutput',false);
  end
  subDirs = {dirData(dirIndex).name};  %# Get a list of the subdirectories
  validIndex = ~ismember(subDirs,{'.','..'});  %# Find index of subdirectories
                                               %#   that are not '.' or '..'
  for iDir = find(validIndex)                  %# Loop over valid subdirectories
    nextDir = fullfile(dirName,subDirs{iDir});    %# Get the subdirectory path
    fileList = [fileList; getAllFiles(nextDir)];  %# Recursively call getAllFiles
  end

end

After saving the above function somewhere on your MATLAB path, you can call it in the following way:

fileList = getAllFiles('D:\dic');

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