Section: Operating System Functions
dir function was aliased
to the ls function.  Starting with version 3.1, the dir function
has been rewritten to provide compatibility with MATLAB.  The general syntax
for its use is
dir
in which case, a listing of the files in the current directory are output to the console. Alternately, you can specify a target via
  dir('name')
or using the string syntax
dir name
If you want to capture the output of the dir command, you can assign the output
to an array
  result = dir('name')
(or you can omit 'name' to get a directory listing of the current directory.  The
resulting array result is a structure array containing the fields:
name the filename as a string
 date the modification date and time stamp as a string
 bytes the size of the file in bytes as a uint64
 isdir a logical that is 1 if the file corresponds to a directory.
 'name' can also contain wildcards (e.g., dir *.m to get a listing of
all FreeMat scripts in the current directory.