Renaming folders within folders to the name of original folder

Hello,

I have one big folder, lets call "data", which has folders inside called 'person'.

Each "person" has specific folders, sometimes "SE1" and "SE3", sometimes SE1 and SE8, etc..., it's random.

I want these this SE1, SE2, folders, etc, to be renamed to "person1 SE1" , "person 1 SE3" "Person2 SE1" "Person2 SE9" etc...

essentially to be the name of the folder it's in, but keeping it's current foldername.

Can someone help formulate a script for me? I'm very new to Matlab.

thank you!!

Answer 1

[Sourabh Kondapaka]

Hi @Amanda,

Check out the below code

% This is the path to data folder
pathToData = fullfile(pwd, 'data');

dataFolder = dir(pathToData);

dirFlags = [dataFolder.isdir];

subFolders = dataFolder(dirFlags);

%Considering values from 3rd index to not include '.' and '..'
subFolders = subFolders(3:length(subFolders));

for k = 1 : length(subFolders)
  % Get the name of the person folder within data folder
  person = subFolders(k).name;
  personSubFolder = dir(fullfile(pathToData, person));
  
  % Get subFolders within the person folder. Excluding '.' and '..'
  personSubFolder = personSubFolder(3:length(personSubFolder));
  
  
  for j = 1: length(personSubFolder)

      seFolder = personSubFolder(j).name;
      
      % srcFolder is the original folder. destFolder is the new Name of the folder
      % I'm using the movefile() function to rename accordingly 
      
      srcFolder = fullfile(pathToData, person, seFolder);
      destFolder = fullfile(pathToData, person, person + " " + seFolder);
      
      movefile(srcFolder, destFolder);
      
    %       fprintf('\n \n -------------  Renaming from ---------- \n \n');
    %       disp(srcFolder);
    %       fprintf('\n \n To \n \n');
    %       disp(destFolder);
      
  end
  
end

Initial Folder Structure:

After executing the above script:

For more information on "movefile()" you can check the documention here

For more information on "dir()" you can check the documentation here

A similar question has been answered here

You can take the free course Matlab OnRamp

Note: As your query was simple enough, a for-loop approach was sufficient. If you need to achieve something much more complicated than this, please read up about Recursion, Backtracking

[Stephen23]

A very good answer, but let down by this one piece of poor advice:

%Considering values from 3rd index to not include '.' and '..'
subFolders = subFolders(3:length(subFolders)); % FRAGILE AND MISLEADING

Much better advice:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/345841-unexplained-error-on-dir#answer_271627

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/21150-function-call#comment_46042

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/394807-create-text-file-containing-list-of-file-names#comment_556641

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/288815-gui-for-loop-not-working-correctly#answer_224956

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/484430-using-struct-dir-selpath-what-do-and-mean-as-struct-name#answer_395754

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/40949-omitting-pointers-when-listing-folder-contents#answer_50568

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/13978-list-of-files-sorting#answer_19278

As Walter Roberson wrote in that last link: "In short: if your code assumes that '.' and '..' are the first two entries in a directory, your code has a bug (even in MS Windows). If your code assumes that directory entries are returned in any sorted order, your code has a bug (in all OS.)"