Making a directory and adding it to the path

Hello Community,

I am trying to create a new folder, named by user input and immediately have that folder added to the path. Currently, I am achieving this by two separate lines of code:

mkdir(input('Enter new folder name: ', 's'))

addpath(input('Enter Filename to be added to the path: \n', 's'))

but this is clunky as I have to manually enter the same information twice. I have tried this:

mkdir(genpath(input('Enter new folder name: ', 's')))

(also tried with addpath replacing genpath) but this doesn't work and generates the error:

Warning: An empty directory name was given. No directory will be created.
This syntax may not be supported in future releases.

So any thoughts on how I can combine the two commands ie to create a new folder and immediately add it and subfolders to the filepath?

Regards,

10B.

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

This is indeed very clunky. You seem to be allergic to variables, they're useful for storing information from one line to the next :)

while true
  newfolder = input('Enter new folder name: ', 's');
  [status, message] = mkdir(newfolder);
  if ~status
     sprintf('Failed to create folder because %s\n', message);
  else
     break; %get out of while loop
  end
end
addpath(fullfile(pwd, newfolder)); %current folder is returned by pwd. Combined with newfolder gives full path.

Also note that I've added some error handling code, which you should always have when handling user input and / or filesystem. The user may enter invalid name, the folder may not be created due to permission, etc. It's always better to detect this than continue on your merry way.

[10B]

Excellent Guillaume!

This works perfectly. I think your observation is correct, although its not just my allergies to variables that causes problems - it seems that I may be allergic to Matlab altogether!