Last few characters of a string

I have directories with filenames that are long string of digits. For example 1.3.6.1.4.1.14519.5.2.1.5168.1900.105097869285462803844775342850 I would like to select my file based on the last four digits of the file ( I manually provide the needed digits to check) So I will code in if last four digits =8250 then Neededfile=1.3.6.1.4.1.14519.5.2.1.5168.1900.105097869285462803844775342850 I got the list but I don't know how to check dd.name for the last four digits? I looked in sscanf, strfind but I could not figure out the appropriate use.

    % code

dirarray = dir(datapath); for i=1:numel(dirarray) dd = dirarray(i); HELP NEEDED HERE disp('found file'); end end

Thanks.

Answer 1

[Jan]

Either consider the filter at obtaining the files already:

DirList = dir(fullfile(datapath, '*8250'))

Or use FEX: strncmpr (fast, but you need to compile the C code):

DirList  = dir(fullfile(datapath, '*'));
NameList = {DirList.name};
Match    = NameList(strncmpr(NameList, '8250', 4));

Or use a regular expression:

index = ~cellfun('isempty', regexp(NameList, '8250$'));
Match = NameList(index)

[Stephen23]

+1 for the neat use of dir in the first method.

Another possibility would be to extract the last four characters:

D = dir(...);
last4 = cellfun(@(s)s(end-3:end),{D.name},'uni',0);

or

last4 = regexp({D.name},'\d{4}$','match')

which can then be easily compared using strcmp, ismember, etc.