dir command help!

I am trying to understand the dir command. I am looking section that List the contents of a folder. the syntax is dir my_folder , is my folder in the current directory or it must be a string like'C:\......my 'folder Reference: http://uk.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/dir.html?searchHighlight=dir#inputarg_name

Answer 1

[Anand Swaroop]

Dir function lists the files and folders in current directory.

The argument ‘my_folder’ you mentioned should be a directory path, either absolute or relative.

For example, if you are in the path

C:/demo/my_dir. 

then following both are valid usages

dir('.') 
dir('C:/demo/my_dir') 

If you try it from parent directory i.e. C:/demo, you can pass relative path also

dir('my_dir') 

You can also pass a variable which contains the valid path

dirpath='my_dir' 
dir(dirpath) 

Hope this will be helpful to you

Best Regards

Anand Swaroop

[Rik]

I suspect the OP was trying something like this:

my_dir='C:\demo';
dir my_dir

Luckily the command syntax is getting less common (except with axis and hold, etc), so this problem is getting less frequent.

[Jan]

dir(.) is no valid Matlab syntax. Better: dir('.').

Avoid using "path" as name of a variable. This is not an error at runtime, but during debugging shadowing the important function path() might have very strange side effects.

[Anand Swaroop]

@Jan correction done. thanks for pointing out.