loop through subjects in Matlab path to run a program in subfolders

I am trying to loop through multiple subjects in multiple subfolders

This is what I want to do in the long run assuming I am working weith a single subject

"%direc = dir(['/Users/konan/Documents/Data/PO1/*.HWR']);"

path1 = '/Users/konan/Documents/Data/';
path2 = 'P01/';   (I want to loop through subject P1 - P90)
path3 = '*.HWR';
direc =  dir([fullfile(path1,path2, path3)]);

[Walter Roberson]

Do there exist P____ folders that are not P<digit><digit> ?

Is it important to loop folder by folder, or would it be okay to just go ahead and generate all of the file names in one shot (knowing that they could be classified by folder later if needed) ?

[Reuben Addison]

Yes the data to be processed are contained in the participant's folders eg P01, P02,,.....P090, so I want to loop through each folder

[Walter Roberson]

Is there, for example, a Pie_Recipes folder? A Photographs folder? Any other folder whose name begins with P but which is not P<digit><digit> ?

Answer 1

[Yash]

Hi Reuben Addison,

To loop through multiple subjects in multiple subfolders, you can use nested loops to iterate over the subjects and subfolders. Here's an example:

path1 = '/Users/konan/Documents/Data/';

% list of subject names
subjects = {'P01', 'P02', 'P03', ..., 'P90'};
    
file_pattern = '*.HWR';
    
for i = 1:length(subjects)
    
    % construct the path to the subject folder
    subject_path = fullfile(path1, subjects{i});
    
    % get a list of files in the subject folder that match the file pattern
    direc = dir(fullfile(subject_path, file_pattern));

    % loop through the files
    for j = 1:length(direc)
        file_path = fullfile(subject_path, direc(j).name);
        disp(file_path)
    end
    
end

In this example, we first define the root path to the data directory (path1), as well as a list of subject names (subjects) and a file pattern (file_pattern). We then loop through each subject in the subjects list, and for each subject, we construct the path to the subject folder using the fullfile function. We then use the dir function to get a list of files in the subject folder that match the file pattern. Finally, we loop through each file in the list and do something with it (e.g., read its contents, process the data, etc.).

I hope this helps.