MATLAB: Save a file copy of a script from within that script…

save copy text backup

I'm interested in saving a copy of a script every time I run that script. I suppose that it's a kind of poor-man's version control. I'm varying the script a lot with time, and I'd like to ensure that in the future, when I look over the output from it, I can identify exactly which version I was using.
I have a very ugly way to do it right now, that uses the eval command and the ! syntax to call the DOS? copy command:
   CopyName = ['"',ResultsDir,UniqueID,'.txt"'];
   eval(['!copy MyScript.m ',CopyName])
I suppose that the ideal version would know the filename of the calling script, and not rely on the ! or eval syntax.
Any ideas?
Thanks, Justin

Best Answer

This is how you can do a backup of your m file everytime you run it but matlab already does that for you, if you want to keep several backup files you must come up with a way to name them, maybe with a string with the date and hour or having a number that get incremented everytime your run the file.
FileNameAndLocation=[mfilename('fullpath')];
newbackup=sprintf('%sbackup.m',FileNameAndLocation);
currentfile=strcat(FileNameAndLocation, '.m');
copyfile(currentfile,newbackup);
With version number
Version='1';
FileNameAndLocation=[mfilename('fullpath')];
newbackup=sprintf('%sbackup%s.m',FileNameAndLocation,Version);
currentfile=strcat(FileNameAndLocation, '.m');
copyfile(currentfile,newbackup);
You can also check if the backup of a particular version already exists by doind
Version='1';
FileNameAndLocation=[mfilename('fullpath')];
newbackup=sprintf('%sbackup%s.m',FileNameAndLocation,Version);
A = exist(newbackup,'file')
if (A~=0)
warning('Backup already exists for the current version')
end
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