MATLAB dir without '.' and '..'

Question

the function dir returns an array like

. .. Folder1 Folder2 

and every time I have to get rid of the first 2 items, with methods like :

for i=1:numel(folders)     foldername = folders(i).name;     if foldername(1) == '.' % do nothing             continue;     end     do_something(foldername) end 

and with nested loops it can result in a lot of repeated code.

So can I avoid these "folders" by an easier way?

Thanks for any help!

Edit:

Lately I have been dealing with this issue more simply, like this :

for i=3:numel(folders)     do_something(folders(i).name) end 

simply disregarding the first two items.

BUT, pay attention to @Jubobs' answer. Be careful for folder names that start with a nasty character that have a smaller ASCII value than .. Then the second method will fail. Also, if it starts with a ., then the first method will fail :)

So either make sure you have nice folder names and use one of my simple solutions, or use @Jubobs' solution to make sure.

Answer 1

A loop-less solution:

d=dir; d=d(~ismember({d.name},{'.','..'}));