How to produce and save in a variable a list of a folder's files?

Hello, so I'm trying to get a list of the names of every file .mat on a folder (all of the files on this folder) and save this result in a variable so I can use it later on a for loop. I've tried this:

cd 'C:\Users\David\Documents\Tesis\matlab\resultados\saves' % folder that I want the files from
folder= dir ('*.mat')
bea= zeros(16,1) % 16 is the number of elements in the folder
contador=0
for i=1:16
contador= contador+1
name=folder(i).name
bea(contador,:)= name
end

I don't even know if this is possible this way, I'm just trying a lot of things. I will definitely appreciate it if somebody can help me

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

a=dir('*.mat');
b={a.name}

[Beatriz Sanchez]

oh! so simple, thank u

Answer 2

[Stephen23]

Do NOT use cd unless you want to force yourself into writing slow hard-to-debug code. It is better to use a full path name:

D =  'C:\Users\David\Documents\Tesis\matlab\resultados\saves';
S = dir(fullfile(D,'*.mat'));
C = {S.name}

[Beatriz Sanchez]

alright, I'll keep that in mind, thank you