dirtab(in)

files = dirtab(in) returns the directory listing of in as a table. MATLABs builtin DIR command generates directory listing but the struct it would return is converted into a table. The variable names of the resulting table are the field names as returned by DIR, supplemented by 'ext' which identifies the file-extension, and folder (returned by DIR only since R2016b).
The differences between dirtab and dir are as follows:
+ DIRTAB returns a table instead of a struct
+ DIRTAB adds the variable folder, even before R2016b. A trailing filesep is added (not done by DIR in R2016b)
+ The name column does not include the file extension, which appears in a separate column
+ The date column now contains datetime representation of file dates instead of cellstr text.
+ the pseudo-dirs '.' and '..' don't appear in table rows.
Tabulating the directory with dirtab makes it easier to sort by file size or file extension, say, using sortrows. The first 3 columns are folder, file, and ext which can be catenated to obtain full file paths.