Re: dir / ls routines return values

[Daniel J Sebald]

John W. Eaton wrote:
> On 25-Jan-2009, Daniel J Sebald wrote:
>
> | The dir() and ls() routines return strings for file names in a directory, but 
> they place breaks in file names with spaces, which ostensibly makes the 
> routines not useful for programming.  [I'm not a fan of spaces in file names... 
> one of the most confusing and messy conventions in computer programming.]
> | 
> | For example, try
> | 
> |   mkdir('dir with spaces and # @ $ % [ ]')
> |   dir('./')
> |   ls -1
> |   d = ls -1
> | 
> | Note a couple things.  The list returned by dir and ls have line
> | breaks, so there is no way to know exactly where line breaks and
> | spaces are in files.  There is no robust way of using dir and ls
> | that I see.
>
> If you write
>
>   x = dir ('./')
>
> then you will get a structure array.  One of the fields is "name", and
> I don't see a problem with spaces if you use this form.

Oh yeah, I didn't notice that.  So guess there is a route.  It's not as nice as 
a cell array, but it works.

On an older version of Octave both the 0-output return and the 1-output return 
have the spaces replaced by line breaks.

Dan