addpath(cd) returns name is nonexistent or not a directory

OS: mac OS "Big Sur" v. 11.6

MATLAB: '9.10.0.1739362 (R2021a) Update 5'

If I CD to a directory in my Box folder and type addpath(cd), I get name is non existent or not a directory. How is that possible? I don't have this problem on my other computer running Mojave and Matlab 2020b (I think).

Maybe relevant: I'm running matlab by opening a terminal and executing this:

sudo /applications/Matlab_r2021a.app/bin/matlab

If I just launch matlab by double-clicking the app icon anything relying on Java runs painfully slow... I found somewhere on the help community that running from a terminal instance works around that, which seems to be true.

[Adam Snyder]

to be clear, cd('~/Box/myfolder') works, but then addpath(cd) throws an error

[Adam Danz]

Does the same behavior occur when you CD to a local folder? I'm not a mac user so I cannot test it. There are known problems associated with CD'ing to remote or cloud folders.

Answer 1

[Adam Snyder]

Ok, this isn't exactly a solution/explanation, but a workaround. I discovered that if I launch MATLAB at the Terminal without sudo, i.e.:

/applications/Matlab_r2021a.app/bin/matlab

.... rather than...

sudo /applications/Matlab_r2021a.app/bin/matlab

...then everything works as expected. It's still puzzling because usually a superuser would have more directory access than a regular user, not less. Also, I'm sure I had been using sudo to solve some other problem that I forgot about and will rediscover in time, but it seems to fix this issue for now anyways. Hopefully MathWorks will patch up whatever issue makes java painfully slow on Big Sur / Catalina soon and I can go back to launching MATLAB like a regular program...

Answer 2

[Rik]

What do you expect to happen when you call cd without any input?

It looks like you actually intend to use addpath(pwd).

[Stephen23]

"What do you expect to happen when you call cd without any input?"

It returns the current working directory:

out = cd()

You might be interested to look at the content of PWD.

[Jan]

@Rik: The complete code of pwd is: wd=cd . So if pwd is working, cd should be working also.

[Rik]

Well, I guess you learn something every day. Thank you Stephen and Jan.

I'll leave my answer up for documentary purposes.

Answer 3

[Image Analyst]

The current directory is automatically on the path so perhaps it just throws an error because it does not need to be added via addpath(), though it could probably have chosen a more descriptive error message if that were the case.