How can i find the path of a file?

First i will explain my situation. I have a folder that has a lot of sublevels and one of those subfolders contains the file i need.

main folder
  subfolder1
      subfolder1.1
          subfolder1.1.1
          subfolder1.1.2
          subfolder1.1.3
              File.sldd
          subfolder1.1.4
          ...
      subfolder1.2
      ...
  subfolder2
  ...

I know the name of the file: File.sldd

But now I want to know the full path of the file so i can add this file to my current folder and open it with fopen(). The main folder is already added to my current folder. Is there a command that has the name of the file as input and gives me the path as output? Or is there a quick way to get the path of the file?

Thanks

Arnaud

Answer 1

[Honglei Chen]

Try

fileparts(which('File.sldd'))

But your File.sldd has to be on path.

[Arnaud Dupont]

Yes, i know but to be able to add it to the path i need to know the full path so i can use addpath()!

[Guillaume]

Then why did you accept an answer that is wrong?

[Arnaud Dupont]

sorry! my mistake

[Honglei Chen]

Then you'll have to write a script yourself to find this file. You can use the dir command to list all the files/subfolders under current folder and keeps repeating for each subfolder until you find that file. The result of dir will contain the path when you find your file.

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

"so i can add this file to my current folder and open it with fopen()"

That is completely unnecessary. You don't need to (and shouldn't) add the folder of the file to the path in order to open it with fopen. Just pass the full path of the file to fopen.

There is no function in matlab to do what you want (yet! there will be in R2014b). You have to recurse through the directory using dir. This should work:

function filefolder = findfile(root, filename)
   dircontent = dir(fullfile(root, '*'));
   if any(strcmpi({dircontent(~[dircontent.isdir]).name}, filename))  %case insensitive comparison. Works for Windows only. 
        %file is found in directory
        filefolder = root;
   else
        %look in subdirectories
        for subdir = dircontent([dircontent.isdir] & ~ismember({dircontent.name}, {'.', '..'}))'
            filefolder = findfile(fullfile(root, subdir.name), filename);
            if ~isempty(filefolder)
                %found in a directory, all done
                return;
            end
        end
        %looked in all subdirectories and not found
        filefolder = ''; %return empty
   end
end

You can then do:

folder = findfile(mainfolder, 'File.sldd');
fid = fopen(fullfile(folder, 'File.sldd'));

Answer 3

[Image Analyst]

You can use genpath to make a list of all folders, then use dir() to see if the file you want is in that folder. See attached demo.

[Guillaume]

Note that genpath will ignore any folder named private, and any folder beginning with @ or +. It's designed for manipulating matlab toolbox folders, not arbitrary folders.