Searching for a file when the filename is always changing

Hi I am trying to readtable a dat file but the dat filename changes for different situations. Is it possible to readtable the dat file just based on the first few letters of the file?

sample = input('Sample? ', 's');

directory = 'C:\Users\tathuen\Desktop\Data\'
filename = append(directory, sample)

% Count number of location in file

dircontent = dir(filename);
numfolders = sum([dircontent.isdir]) - 2

% For loop to open all the data 


for i = 1:numfolders
    
    % Opening each dat files
    T1 = readtable(append('C:\Users\tathuen\Desktop\Data\', sample, '\location', num2str(i), '-----\test-----\test1.dat'));
    

For example, the filename will always be 'location 1 (random letters) \ test (random letters)'. Is it possible to locate the file just based on 'location 1' and 'test'?

Thanks in advance! :)

[Ive J]

if your file name always has a certain pattern, yes you can use regexp or pattern to find your file. Example:

filenames = ["this.file.dat", "that.file.dat", "bla.dat", "targetXXXX.dat"]; % different .dat files in the directory
% I'm looking for a dat file starting with "target"
myfile = filenames(startsWith(filenames, "target"))

myfile = "targetXXXX.dat"

[Tat Onn Huen]

i couldnt get this to work as the filenames were random so i couldnt create a filenames = [ ]. thanks for helping!

Answer 1

[dpb]

"the filename will always be 'location 1 (random letters) \ test (random letters)'."

rootdir='C:\Users\tathuen\Desktop\Data\';
fSearch=fullfile(rootdir,'location*','test.*');     % build matching wildcard expression
d=dir(fSearch);                                     % and look for match
for i=1:numel(d)
  T1 = readtable(fullfile(d(i).folder.d(i).name);
  ...  

Fix up the sample pattern to match the actual pattern; I didn't try to parse the sample code extremely carefully...

[Tat Onn Huen]

thanks! this works