uigetfile function error when one file selected!

can someone help me figure this one out?

I want to be able to browse for files and take the selected files in a loop like however i get an error "brace indexing not allowed" however, the code works if i select 2 or more files.

Brace indexing is not supported for variables of this type.

Error in m190507_model_vehicle_test_compare (line 45)

load(files_to_compare{i})

[files_to_compare,path] = uigetfile({'*.mat'},'MultiSelect','on');
for i = 1:1:length(files)
load(files{i})

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

If you select >1 file, the output of uigetfile() is stored in a cell array which your for-loop is designed to handle. If you select 1 file, the output of uigetfile() is stored as a char array which your for-loop is not designed to handle.

What you want to do is change the char array to a cell array.

if ischar(files_to_compare)
    files_to_compare = {files_to_compare}; 
end

Then enter your for-loop.

I'd add one more conditional to handle the event of selecting 0 files.

if isnumeric(files_to_compare) && isequal(files_to_compare,0)
    return                                          % quit the function
   % error('User did not select any files.')        % _or_ throw an error
end

[ramez sabra]

thanks a lot Adam. That worked.

and thank you for going one more step to highlight the no selection condition.

[Adam Danz]

Glad I could help.

[laurent jalabert]

if isequal(files_to_compare,0) || isequal(path,0)
    disp('User pressed cancel')
else
    disp(['User selected ', fullfile(path, files_to_compare)])
end

[Walter Roberson]

if ischar(files_to_compare)
    files_to_compare = {files_to_compare}; 
end

can be replaced by the shorter (but slightly less efficient) code

files_to_compare = cellstr(files_to_compare);

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

This is normal. uigetfile only returns a cell array if more than one file was selected. You can use iscell or ischar to test. And watch out for nothing selected which returns a numeric scalar.

Also you used the wrong variable names between the lines

[ramez sabra]

yes i just notices. but in my main file the variables are correct. i made some changes here to only extract the relevant code for my case. thanks for pointing it out anyway and thank you for the answer.