MATLAB: Omitting pointers when listing folder contents

dir

In order to list folder contents I use:
TopFolder = dir('E:\');
Say if I had one file within that specific folder MATLAB returns 3 structures where the name of the first two are just pointers i.e. '.' and '..'.
How is it possible to omit these? I currently just omit the first two by:
a = SubFolder(3:end)
then use
a.name
to obtain the name. Is there a more accurate way of doing this i.e. supported by the documentation?

Best Answer

It is not documented, that . and .. are the first two elements replied by DIR. Therefore checking the names is safer:
DirList = dir('E:\');
DirName = {DirList.name};
DirList(strcmp(DirName, '.')) = [];
DirList(strcmp(DirName, '..')) = [];
To omit all files and folders starting with a dot:
DirList = dir('E:\');
DirName = {DirList.name};
DirList(strncmp(DirName, '.', 1)) = [];
Now "DirList" is the cleaned list of files and folders.
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