MATLAB: Need to find files in a dir structure with similar but not identical names

file

I am trying to pull data from multiple files in a directory. I have written a for loop to get to the specified file, but when I search for the file using an * is cannot be found. For example, the file name 072814_Nominal.xls and another file in the same directory might be called 081213_Nominal.xls. I want to pull date from only files with "Nominal" in the name. I have tried using the below loop
D=dir(pathname);
for i=1:length(D)
    if D(i).name=='*Nominal.xls' %this line is trouble - says matrix dimensions must agree
        filename=fullfile(pathname,D(i).name);
        temp(i)=xlsread(filename,'Sheet1','R4');
    else
    end
end
but I am getting the "Error using ==", "matrix dimensions must agree" error and I cannot find a way to make Matlab find the file that looks like 'Nominal' or 'Nominal.xls' (I have tried both). Please help!

Best Answer

Look for an implementation of grep or agrep for MATLAB. However if your problem has a monotonic redundancy, I might be able to suggest an alternative. For example, if you are only concerned about files ENDING with a very specific name (without possibility of spelling errors) such as '_nominal.xls', then here is a very lazy way to do it.
files = dir('*.xls');
for k = 1:length(files)
    current=files(k).name;
    check(k)=strcmp(current(end-10:end),'nominal.xls');
end
list=find(check);
images = cell(1, length(list));
for k = 1:length(list)
    data{k}=AN_APPROPRIATE_LOAD_FUNCTION_FOR_XLS_WITH_YOUR_PARAMETERS(files(list(k)).name);
end
Now only files whose name has the last 11 characters exactly 'nominal.xls' is loaded into the cell data.
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