How to use dir in a loop to be dynamic?

Hi, Sorry for a simple question. I have abc1_0.765mat ......abc50_0.7462mat How I can call the dir in a loop.

for i=1:50
    A = dir('abc1*.mat');% but it also calls abc11 and I just need abc1
end
I tried A=dir(fullfile... % but I got error

Any Suggestion

Answer 1

[Cedric]

We actually use DIR the other way around. If file names are very regular and determined by e.g. a number, we built them using SPRINTF:

 for fId = 1 : 50
    filename = sprintf( 'data_%02d.mat', fId )  ;
    ... do something ...
 end

This generates names data_01.mat, data_02.mat, etc, over successive iterations. When we don't know file names, we get a directory listing using wildcards if we know a pattern, e.g.

 listing = dir( 'abc*.mat' ) ;

Calling DIR once only, we get listing as a struct array whose entries contain references to all relevant files. Then we iterate over these entries:

 for fId = 1 : numel( listing )
    filename = listing(fId).name ;
    ... do something ...
 end

Finally, we use FULLFILE when we need to concatenate elements of path, e.g. a folder name and a file name:

 folder  = 'MyData' ;
 listing = dir( fullfile( folder, 'abc*.mat' )) ;

 for fId = 1 : numel( listing )
    fileLocator = fullfile( folder, listing(fId).name ) ;
    ... do something ...
 end

[Rita]

Thanks Cedric. Actually I have more than 100000 files and around 23000( not sure) of them starts with abc1_....mat I 'd like to call all of the files which starts with abc1_...mat and do somthing and then moving to the other files which starts with abc2_...mat and so on .It ends with abc50....mat.

[Cedric]

Ok, then you could go for something along the following line:

 % - Iterate through groups 1 to 50.
 for groupId = 1 : 50

    % - Get dir listing for 'abc1_*.mat', 'abc2_*.mat', .., 
    %  where 1, 2, .. is the group ID.
    pattern = sprintf( 'abc%d_*.mat', groupId ) ;
    listing = dir( pattern ) ;

    % - Iterate through files of the current group.
    for fileId = 1 : numel( listing )
        filename = listing(fileId).name ;

        % - Load MAT File and ..
        loaded = load( filename ) ;
        ... do something ...
    end
 end

[Rita]

Thank you so much or your great help.

[Cedric]

My pleasure.