MATLAB: User input file directory

directoryinputselect folder interactively

I am writing a script that reads all of the files of a certain type in a given directory, and I'm wondering if there is a way to allow the directory location to be a user input.
Currently the code looks like:
directory_in = dir('C:\Folder\Bob\*.dat');
I would like to change it to something more like:
input_in = input('Enter the directory name: ');
directory_in = dir(input_in, '*.dat');
I know this code won't work as written for multiple reasons, but I'm wondering if there is some way I could combine the user input with the file type suffix in order to minimize the amount of editing a future user would need to perform on the script.

Best Answer

You might try uipickfiles(). http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2010/02/19/file-and-folder-selection-gui/
I'm not a big fan of uigetdir(). It would be better if you could see the files, but had them disabled. I hear all the time from my users that they're confused because they can't see the files in the folders so they aren't sure if they're in the right folder. Of course you could use uigetfile() instead, but the problem with doing that is that it requires the user to pick a file. Not good when you're wanting them to select a folder and not a file. I wish uigetdir() had an option to show files but disabled the user from actually selecting any of them.
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