Obtaining types of files in directory and put them into an array

I have a range of files in a directory that I am loading into a listbox component in a GUI. In an attempt to sort firstly by extension, it has been suggested that I stack the types of files. In order to do this, I need to know what types of files exist. I am trying to get an array which just consists of all the different types of file extensions:

first i initialise the array to hold the types of files

extlist=[]; % Initialise the array

I then loop thru all files and use file parts to pull out the extension:

[folder1, name, extension] = fileparts(baseFileName);

I then attempt to add this to the array

extlist=vertcat(extlist,extension)

and this is where my attempt fails. I also do not know how to pick out single occurances so my array will just contain what types of files are present. With this list I want to then perform a stack listing procedure.

thanks for any pointers. Jason

Answer 1

[Orion]

you're trying to concatenate strings of different lengths, it can't work.

put them in a cell array.

files = dir;

AllExtension = [];
for i = 3:length(files)
    [pathstr,name,ext] = fileparts(files(i).name);
    AllExtension{end+1,1} = ext;
end
AllExtension = unique(AllExtension); % get only one time the different extensions.

[Jason]

perfect, thankyou

Answer 2

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

s=dir,
f={s.name}  % The list of your files
a=regexp(f,'(?<=\.)[^\.]+$','match')
b=a(~cellfun(@isempty,a)) % list of non empty extensions
c=unique([b{:}])  % unique extension