Create Text file containing list of file names

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I am sure this has been answered before somewhere, but I am getting really frustrated trying to find the correct code.
I have over 400 files in a directory. I would like to create a text file that lists all of their file names. Then place this text file into the directory with the original files, not the matlab working directory. I have to do this well over 100 times for 100 different directories.
The only code that has worked partially is this:
dirName = 'D:\ABN tdump files\ERA -I 10m\April 10m'; %# folder path
files = dir( fullfile(dirName,'*.') ); %# list all *.xyz files
files = {files.name}'; %'# file names
I have created a cell with all of my file names, but now I can't create the text file. I get the very ambiguous error message that just says there is an error with one of my lines of code. Not helpful. So. Question. How does one create a text file with a cell array?
  8 Comments
C G
C G on 16 Apr 2018
Thank you Walter Roberson. Works Great.
files([files.isdir]) = []; %removes ., .. and all folders
This also worked.
files = dir(fullfile(dirName,'name*') );
C G
C G on 30 Apr 2018
This is for all that need to know how to create a lot of files and then have them move to a certain location. This code works a charm. I created an excel file with all of the directory paths, "FileDirectory". I then imported the list as a string.
for q = 1:144 %This number is linked to the number of cells that have filepaths. Pathnames in FileDirectory.xls.
filedirectory = FileDirectory{q,1};
dirName = filedirectory; %'D:\ABN_tdump_files\10_day_Traj\ERA-I_2500m\April2500m\'; %# folder path
files = dir(fullfile(dirName,'fdump*') ); %# list all *.xyz files
files = {files.name}; %'# file names
[fid,msg] = fopen(sprintf('INFILE'),'wt');
assert(fid>=0,msg)
fprintf(fid,'%s\n',files{:});
fclose(fid);
movefile ('C:\Users\cglor\Documents\HYSPLIT\INFILE', dirName)
end

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Accepted Answer

Stephen23
Stephen23 on 14 Apr 2018
Edited: Stephen23 on 14 Apr 2018
Simpler:
D = 'D:\ABN tdump files\ERA -I 10m\April 10m';
S = dir(fullfile(D,'*.xyz')); % specify the file extension to exclude directories
[fid,msg] = fopen(fullfile(D,'text.txt'));
assert(fid>=3,msg)
fprintf(fid,'%s\n',S.name)
fclose(fid);
Repeat for each directory D.

More Answers (1)

Ahmet Cecen
Ahmet Cecen on 14 Apr 2018
Edited: Ahmet Cecen on 14 Apr 2018
Almost there. Add these lines to the bottom and it should work:
files(1:2) = []; % get rid of . and ..
fileID = fopen(fullfile(dirName,'list.txt'),'w'); % create and open file
cellfun(@(x) fprintf(fileID,'%s \n',x), files) % write file
  4 Comments
Ahmet Cecen
Ahmet Cecen on 14 Apr 2018
Ah there it is:
>> dir('*')
!test.txt . .. A1.tiff A2.tiff
Welp... gotta go do some changes in old codes now...
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 14 Apr 2018
I have been unable to find any documentation promising any particular directory order for NTFS. In practice the order has always been sorted by Unicode when I have tested. (Though I have not checked if it is utf8 or utf16-le or something else).
It is not uncommon these days for filesystems to sort the first block of a directory whenever a change is made to the block, but filesystems differ in whether they keep all of the blocks of one directory sorted, since doing so can result in unnecessary disk i/o. Filesystems have also differed about whether to sort alphabetically (allowing binary search on names) or sorting to have the most commonly used entries first.

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