How to not plot a single file in a directory?

Hi I am wanting to compare every file in a directory with one specific file in the same directory for a closest match, say compare file a,b,c with file x. I import the data of file x first, with

targetfilename = 'x.txt';

matchT = readtable(targetfilename,'Delimiter',' ','ReadVariableNames',false,'Format','%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f', 'HeaderLines', 6);

And then import each file a,b,c in turn after doing some work on each data, like:

txtfiles = dir('*.txt');
for file = txtfiles'
    
filename = file.name;
T = readtable(filename,'Delimiter',' ','ReadVariableNames',false,'Format','%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f%f', 'HeaderLines', 6);

S21complex = complex(T.Var4, T.Var5);

%doing a comparison here with file x
end

So I first compare x with a, then x with b, etc... However, file x is still in the same directory, the above code will compare x with x, and find it to be the closest match. I tried using something like

if filename ~= targetfilename

after the 'for' line, but the length of the real names of x and a,b,c do not match.

Is there a convenient way to exclude a particular file from my second block of code? If it helps, my targetfilename will always start with a letter, whilst a,b,c will always start with a number. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

[Stephane Dauvillier]

You can use the function setdiff to remove one value from a set of values:

f = dir;
names = setdiff({f.name},"myfileIDontWantToProceed")

[Ted Baker]

Thank you Stephane, that worked perfectly.