MATLAB: Read result.txt files with same file name is subfolders

dirfilenamefullfileloopMATLABsubfolder

Im using a software to run an analysis with a variable (in this case 12 different several wind speeds). I have a main folder with a subfolder for each wind speed with alot of files. However I am only interested in reading the results.tda file in each subfolder (they all have the same name). I have managed to read all the subfolders, creating the D_sub which gives a 1×12 struct with each file and corresponding folder as seen in the image below. In this example Ive used the txt file for testing but I also want to use the results.tda files.
subfold.png
However, I am only able to get the last result.txt file in the workspace.
I am currently using the following code to go through the folders and find the files, but "content" only gives me the data for the last run (Wind_9).
Goal: to get e.g. result1 for Wind1, result5 for Wind5 etc etc and to be able to extract the data I want from each result file.
Main = 'C:MainFolder';
Sub = dir(fullfile(Main,'*'));
Sub = Sub(3:end); % Eliminate "." and ".."
N = setdiff({Sub([Sub.isdir]).name},{'.','..'}); % list of subfolders of Main.
 for i = 1 : numel(N)
    D_sub(i) = dir( fullfile( Main, Sub(i).name, 'results.txt' )) ;  
    nel = {D_sub(~[D_sub.isdir]).name};
       
    for j = 1 : numel(nel)
        inLocator = fullfile( Main, Sub(i).name, D_sub(j).name ) ;
        content = fileread( inLocator ) ;
    end
 end
Thanks!

Best Answer

Hi, you have defined ‘content’as a single variable, therefore it is holding only the last value of the loop. If you want to want to save each loop data to a separate variable, the following code might help you.
Just declare ‘content’as an empty cell array and access every cell of the variable ‘content’using the indexing variable j in every loop.
Main = 'C:MainFolder';
Sub = dir(fullfile(Main,'*'));
Sub = Sub(3:end); % Eliminate "." and ".."
N = setdiff({Sub([Sub.isdir]).name},{'.','..'}); % list of subfolders of Main.
for i = 1 : numel(N)
    D_sub(i) = dir( fullfile( Main, Sub(i).name, 'results.txt' )) ;
    nel = {D_sub(~[D_sub.isdir]).name};
    % Declare empty cell array content
    content = {};
    for j = 1 : numel(nel)
        inLocator = fullfile( Main, Sub(i).name, D_sub(j).name ) ;
        content{j} = fileread( inLocator ) ;
    end
end
In this way your ‘Wind_1’ data will be in content(1), ‘Wind_2’ data will be in content(2), and so on…
Also, you might want to read why you should always use indexing instead of dynamically named variables here.
Hope this helps!
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