MATLAB: Adding a pathdef.m file, as a string, to the current path

Question

Hello,

I have saved a pathdef file ('pathdef_etc.m') which contains the paths that I need for a given project. I simply want to get the string output from this pathdef file, so that I can add it to my current path using 'addpath( path_string )'.

How can I get this pathdef file as a string?

Thank you

Answer 1

You probably want to use textscan for this:

fileID = fopen('pathdef_etc.m')
C = textscan(fileID, '%s', 'Delimiter', '\n')
fclose(fileID)

The output is a single cell containing a n-by-1 cell array of character vectors (one per line in the input file). So C{1}{1} contains the first line of your file, C{1}{2} the second, and so on. You could then set up a loop to add each line to the path:

for i=1:size(C{1},1)
    addpath(C{1}{i})
end

Hope this helps!