How ignore a string of characters?

I would like define a set of files by using their names which are string of characters, for example:

LNC-CAT_26_ *170613* _run_bada_01.mat

LNC-CAT_26_ *072612* _run_bada_01.mat

LNC-CAT_26_ *045612* _run_bada_01.mat

...etc.

But, I also would like to ignore a little characters string (in blod) in these filenames because these little strings change every time.

my first lines of command are :

source = 'C:\Users\ALG\Desktop\2012_fMRI_LNCCAT\LNC_CAT\ba-da';
direction = 'C:\Users\ALG\Desktop\behavior_analysis';
sujets = {'03','05','08','11','14','15','17','21','26'};
for numsubj = sujets
    run1file = ['LNC-CAT_' cell2str(numsubj) '_' * '_run_bada_01.mat'];
    etc....

What function or command should I write instead of the star (last line) in order to ignore the bold string?

[Jan]

You do not want to ignore the strings. You want to consider them, also you do not known them before. Because the names look like MAT-file names, I guess, that you want to import the file. What should happen with this file?

What is cell2str?

Answer 1

[Roberto]

if the length of the numbers is always the same, you can try parsing the string via the subscripts:

newStr = [oldstr(1:11) oldstr(18:end) ] ;

[Maxime]

ok thanks, yes the string I want ignore has always the same number of characters, but how can I implement this in my command line?

Answer 2

[Roberto]

I'm assuming you have this string like this, but I didn't understand what is it that you want to do, anyway here's some code to give you ideas:

oldStr = 'LNC-CAT_26_170613_run_bada_01.mat';
sujets = {'03','05','08','11','14','15','17','21','26'};
for i = 1: numel(sujets)
  run1file1 = ['LNC-CAT_' sujets{i} '_run_bada_01.mat']
  run1file2 = [oldStr(1:8) sujets{i} '_' oldStr(12:end)]
end
disp(run1file1);
disp(run1file2);

[Maxime]

Hello, Thank you for your response. and sorry for the late. Ok your program runs correctly. But it does not give what I wanted to do.

This is what I want to do : in a directory I want to select files by their number to read their content (matrices)

LNC-CAT_03_ 170613 _run_bada_01.mat
LNC-CAT_05_ 072612 _run_bada_01.mat
LNC-CAT_08_ 045612 _run_bada_01.mat

the number after LNC_CAT_ is the subject number, end this is with this number i want to select each file, but the string of six number inside the name of each file change every time.

after, in each file i want to select 2 matrices among 6, in order to merge it.

do you have a solution?

Answer 3

[Roberto]

I don't know if i really got it this time, is this what you want to do?

    selDossier = uigetdir;  % ask for the folder
    cd(selDossier); % go to the folder
    currentFile = dir ; % read folder's content
    selectedFile = {} ;
    selectedSubject = {} ;
    selectedNumber = {} ;
    for i = 1:numel(currentFile) % look for files
        if ~currentFile(i).isdir % discard subfolders
            if strcmpi(currentFile(i).name(1:8),'LNC-CAT_') %starts 'LNC-CAT_'
                selectedFile{end+1} = currentFile(i).name ; %filename
                selectedSubject{end+1} = currentFile(i).name(9:10); %Sub number
                selectedNumber{end+1} = currentFile(i).name(12:17);                 
            end
        end
    end
    % now lets work with each selected file...
    for i = 1: numel(selectedFile)
        load(selectedFile{i}) ;
        disp(['Selected Subject: ' selectedSubject{i}]) ;
        disp([' Selected Number: ' selectedNumber{i}]) ;
        % this depends on what you want to do!!!
    end