How to access folders within a loop

Hello guys!

I am struggling to do something that I don't know if it's possible but let's give it a try.

I have a set of data I want to access and since they are quite a few, I want to do it within a loop. To do so, I created a .txt (see attached) and based on its columns (Station and Network), I want to navigate through the respective directories.

To give an example, if the station is Airport and the network is EMY (as appeared in the .txt), I want the code to be able to find and read the file C:\PhD\Projects\LIFE ASTI\C.3\Weather station data\from desktop\Obs. data 4 Keppas\EMY\2015\Airport.xlsx

obsdir='C:\PhD\Projects\LIFE ASTI\C.3\Weather station data\from desktop\Obs. data 4 Keppas'

stations = readtable('C:\PhD\Projects\LIFE ASTI\C.3\Weather station data\from desktop\Stations coordinates3.txt');

for i=1:size(stations,1)

name = stations( i, 1 );

network = stations (i, 'Network');

lat = stations(i, 'Lat' );

lon = stations(i, 'Lon' );

network.(1);

name.(1);

networkstr = char(network.(1));

namestr = char(name.(1));

[obsdata,txt,raw] = xlsread([obsdir,'\',networkstr,'\', '2015','\','Airport.xlsx']);

end

Of course I am getting two errors!

Error using xlsread (line 132)

XLSREAD unable to open file 'C:\PhD\Projects\LIFE ASTI\C.3\Weather station data\from desktop\Obs. data

4 Keppas\MoT\2015\Airport.xlsx'.

File 'C:\PhD\Projects\LIFE ASTI\C.3\Weather station data\from desktop\Obs. data 4

Keppas\MoT\2015\Airport.xlsx' not found.

Error in Untitled3 (line 23)

[obsdata,txt,raw] = xlsread([obsdir,'\',networkstr,'\', '2015','\','Airport.xlsx']);

Is there any idea please??

Answer 1

[Meg Noah]

Try this (in absence of the Airport.xlsx files I can't completely test it here) - edit the obsdir back to your folder name where the files are:

obsdir='airportData';
stations = readtable(fullfile(obsdir,'Stations coordinates3.txt'));
for istation=1:size(stations,1)
    name = stations.Station{istation};
    network = stations.Network{istation};
    lat  = stations.Lat(istation);
    lon  = stations.Lon(istation);
    [obsdata,txt,raw] = xlsread([obsdir,'\',network,'\', '2015','\','Airport.xlsx']);
end

[Stephen23]

It is recommended to use fullfile rather than concatenating strings together. Instead of

[obsdir,'\',network,'\', '2015','\','Airport.xlsx']

just use fullfile like this (it automatically handles the file separator character):

fulfile(obsdir,network,'2015','Airport.xlsx')