MATLAB: Do I receive many “Duplicate directory name” warnings when starting MATLAB

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I just launched MATLAB and immediately upon startup I get many messages similar to the following:

Warning: Duplicate directory name: /usr/local/matlab/toolbox/matlab/general.

I have not used the SAVEPATH command and have not manually set any MATLABPATH environment variable.

Best Answer

These warnings occur when the pathdef.m and the MATLABPATH environment variable have the same contents. The warnings can be removed by running RESTOREDEFAULTPATH and then running SAVEPATH. You will need permissions to write to pathdef.m.

Please note that RESTOREDEFAULTPATH sets the search path to include only folders for MathWorks installed products. It also resets the startup directory to the default directory.

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MATLAB: Do I receive “??? Error using ==> eval” when I start MATLAB

One reason why this problem may occur is that you may have a "pathdef.m" file from a previous installation in the startup directory of MATLAB, that is, the current working directory when MATLAB launches.

The solution to this problem is to remove or rename the "pathdef.m" file in that startup directory.

Try typing the following within MATLAB:

which -all pathdef

The only "pathdef.m" file that should be on your path is $MATLABROOT/toolbox/local/pathdef.m, where $MATLABROOT denotes your root MATLAB directory. If you have more than one, rename the other files to something other than "pathdef.m".

For MATLAB users outside of the USA, an additional reason this may be occurring is the decimal separator issue. For more information on this topic, see the Related Solution.

MATLAB: Missing pathdef.m when starting MATLAB 7.14 (R2012a), new warning

Him

when you google for the first line of the error you get:

http://www.mathworks.com/support/solutions/en/data/1-IMBXXS

You followed it which is good. The warning about the duplicate entry can be ignored (its a known problem).

So make sure you pathdef.m file exists and has the expected content. How to do this is explained in the link above.

Best Answer

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