How do i delete the contents of a folder?
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could anyone tell me how its done please? I have a number of figures saved in the folder which i want to delete using Matlab. Thank you. the figures are named as figure1 , figure2 and so on. the number of figures i have in my folder changes everytime.
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Accepted Answer
Image Analyst
on 11 Jun 2017
Edited: Image Analyst
on 11 Jun 2017
% Specify the folder where the files live.
myFolder = 'C:\whatever';
% Check to make sure that folder actually exists. Warn user if it doesn't.
if ~isdir(myFolder)
errorMessage = sprintf('Error: The following folder does not exist:\n%s', myFolder);
uiwait(warndlg(errorMessage));
return;
end
% Get a list of all files in the folder with the desired file name pattern.
filePattern = fullfile(myFolder, '*.fig'); % Change to whatever pattern you need.
theFiles = dir(filePattern);
for k = 1 : length(theFiles)
baseFileName = theFiles(k).name;
fullFileName = fullfile(myFolder, baseFileName);
fprintf(1, 'Now deleting %s\n', fullFileName);
delete(fullFileName);
end
Or use 'figure*.PNG' if you saved PNG images of your figures instead of .fig files.
2 Comments
sarah zizou
on 24 Sep 2019
Such a useful script, thanks a lot. I have used to delete my (.mat) files.
More Answers (4)
Damiano Schirinzi
on 21 Mar 2018
Another quicker solution could be to just use:
delete('PathToFolder\*')
This will delete all the files in the directory specified by PathToFolder, where PathToFolder could be either the absolute or relative path.
If you just want to delete figures with know extension of you could use:
delete('PathToFolder\*.fig')
This will delete all figures in the directory specified by PathToFolder.
Or you could use:
delete('PathToFolder\figure*')
This will delete all files with names starting with figure in the directory specified by PathToFolder.
3 Comments
Renan Deuter
on 3 Feb 2021
This doesn't work for me. I suggest it's a problem with the permission windows gives Matlab. Do you know where I can check this?
Jan
on 4 Feb 2021
Please explain "does not work" with any details: Do you get an error message? Does the result differ from your expectations?
Walter Roberson
on 11 Jun 2017
Edited: Jan
on 17 Dec 2018
If you want to delete the folder itself along with everything inside it, then you can use rmdir with the 's' option.
rmdir('directory_I_dont_want', 's')
If you want the directory to be kept, then
which_dir = 'directory_to_delete_files_from';
dinfo = dir(which_dir);
dinfo([dinfo.isdir]) = []; %skip directories
filenames = fullfile(which_dir, {dinfo.name});
delete( filenames{:} )
Note: this will not delete any subdirectories or their contents: I exclude them specifically, but delete would refuse to delete them anyhow.
To be honest, what I would probably actually do is
!rm directory_to_delete_files_from/*
but I am using a Unix system and "rm" is not an MS Windows command.
Ajay Kumar
on 24 Nov 2023
Edited: Ajay Kumar
on 24 Nov 2023
I have written a simple function for clearing the contents of a folder, please check it out: cleardir. Thanks!
Pit Hoffmann
on 9 Oct 2020
Not sure if anyone needs to delete a folder with subfolders and contents in several of these folders. Here is a small function using rmdir() to delete the hole folder. It's very important to close all data of the folder to delete.
function removeFolderWithContent(path)
% Remove folder and its complete content.
% All data of the folder has to be closed.
%
% path -> path to folder as string
%% get folder content
content = dir(path);
for iContent = 3 : numel(content)
if ~content(iContent).isdir
%% remove files of folder
delete(sprintf('%s\\%s',path,content(iContent).name));
else
%% remove subfolder
removeFolderWithContent(sprintf('%s\\%s',path,content(iContent).name));
end
end
rmdir(path);
end
4 Comments
Image Analyst
on 27 Jan 2021
That would be a nice idea, if you mean if your functions are shadowed, because lots of built-in toolbox functions have multiple versions and that's ok. For example
>> which -all find
Jan
on 28 Jan 2021
@Jürgen: See:
- https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27853-checkvars
- https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/27861-uniquefuncnames
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