Fastest recursive search for files

From this answer, I learned that dir can search recursively for files in subdirectories, and it is about 3X faster than what I had been using earlier, getfilenames. However now I am searching a remote directory containing many subdirectories with thousands of files, and the dir command takes 30+ minutes to execute. Is there a faster way? I am happy to call something outside of Matlab, like find in the accepted answer here.

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

Here's an Easter egg. I rarely answer non-MATLAB questions here but since I had to solve this today, I thought I'd share.

This batch file finds all .fig files in a directory and its subfolders (recursive search). Instructions:

1. Create a new file with the .cmd or .bat extension.
2. Copy-paste the script below into the file, adjusting the variables as needed.
3. Update this line to specify the search directory: set "SEARCH_DIR=\\abc\def\"
4. Update this line to specify the output file name, saved to the same directory as the cmd file: set "OUTPUT_FILE=FigFilesList.txt"
5. Update the search term: (*.fig)
6. Double-click on the file to execute the batch script.

Upon execution, the script will...

• ...open the terminal command window
• Search through the specified directory and its subdirectories for files with the .fig extension.
• Output the paths of these files to a text file named FigFilesList.txt.
• Every 200 fig files found, a message will be displayed in the terminal to indicate progress.
• A message will appear at the end to indicate that the seaerch is complete.

@echo off

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion

set "SEARCH_DIR=\\abc\def\"

set "OUTPUT_FILE=FigFilesList.txt"

echo Listing all .fig files in %SEARCH_DIR% and subfolders:

echo File list generated on %DATE% at %TIME% > "%OUTPUT_FILE%"

set /a FILE_COUNT=0

set /a MODULUS=200

for /R "%SEARCH_DIR%" %%i in (*.fig) do (

echo %%i >> "%OUTPUT_FILE%"

set /a FILE_COUNT+=1

set /a RESULT=!FILE_COUNT! %% !MODULUS!

if !RESULT! equ 0 (

echo Number of .fig files found so far: !FILE_COUNT!

)

)

echo List of .fig files saved to %OUTPUT_FILE%

echo **********Search complete**********

echo PROCESS COMPLETE >> "%OUTPUT_FILE%"

endlocal

[KAE]

Thanks for working on this!

Answer 2

[Austin Fite]

This is an old thread at this point but I have a file exchange utility "fsfind" that is purpose-built for this application.

The inputs support regular expressions (see documentation for "regexp") and only subfolders that match the pattern will be searched. I use it to efficiently search very deep directory structures (10+ levels).

[Adam Danz]

+1 thanks for sharing