How to load data from other directory?

I want to load data from other director, but I want to set relative path instead of absolute. So how to step back from current directory? /..

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

This is explained quite well in the documentation:

http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_env/specify-file-names.html

Under the title "Absolute and Relative Path Names" there is the following information:

Some MATLAB functions also support relative path names. Unless otherwise noted, the path name is relative to the current folder. For example:

• myfile.m refers to the myfile.m file in the current folder.
• ./myfolder refers to the myfolder folder in the current folder.
• ../myfolder/myfile.m refers to the myfile.m file in the myfolder folder, where myfolder is at same level as the current folder. Each repetition of ../ at the beginning of the path moves up an additional folder level.

[Pen-Li (Ben) Yu]

To refer to the myfolder folder in the current folder, a forward slash shall not be employed:

• myfolder refers to the myfolder folder in the current folder.

reference: http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_env/specify-file-names.html

[Walter Roberson]

Stephen got tripped up by conversion to bullet form.

Using ./myfolder (with leading period) is a valid way to refer to myfolder within the current folder. It has some advantages in that using ./myfolder tells MATLAB not to search for myfolder along the MATLAB path. For example

exist('./myfolder', 'dir')   %is there one HERE ??
exist('myfolder', 'dir')     %is there one somewhere on the path ?

Answer 2

[sarwat firoz]

Case 1: If your file is in the same folder, as the file you are using to load the data.

load fileName;

Case 2: If your file is in a folder INSIDE your directory,

load folderName/fileName;

Case 3: If your file is one step OUTSIDE your directory,

load ../fileName;

Case 4: If your file is n step OUTSIDE your directory,

load ../../../../ ... ... ... ../../fileName;          
% Please make as many as ../ as much as up you want to go in folder structure.  
% Kindly ignore ellipsis.

Case 5: If you wanna go up 2 folders and from there you wanna enter a separate folder structure,

load ../../folderStructure/fileName;            
% Please use it the way you want.

P.S. Windows users can use either backward slash or Linux.

References:

1. GNU Octave Free your Numbers
2. GNU Octave (version 6.1.0)

[Moon]

for case 5, how do I specify folder structure

Answer 3

[Titus Edelhofer]

Hi,

you simply need to remove the / at the beginning:

dir ..\temp
dir ..\..\anotherFolder\anotherSubfolder

Note: replace "\" of course with "/" on Linux or OSX

Or use the generic functions:

% go to folders up the hierarchy:
upUpFolder = fileparts(fileparts(pwd));

% go into another folder
folder = fullfile(upUpFolder, 'subFolder');

% do whatever you like
dir(folder)

Titus

[Walter Roberson]

Side note: "/" can be used in MS Windows.

Answer 4

[Thorsten]

Use '..' to refer to the folder that contains the current folder. To load ../folderName1/folderName1/filename.ext robustly on different OSs, use:

 load(fullfile('..', 'folderName1', 'folderName2', 'filename.ext'))

you can add as much folderNames as you need.

[Titus Edelhofer]

Jepp, that's easier than using fileparts ...

Answer 5

[Suhas gowda]

This works well for me

[file,path] = uigetfile('*.mat'); % opens file selection dialog box. You may choose data from different folder
A=importdata(strcat(path,file)); % data will be imported from the specified path

[Walter Roberson]

The path returned by uigetfile does not reliably end in a directory separator. Using strcat(path, filename) will sometimes fail. We recommend that you use fullfile(path, filename) which will ensure that correct separators are used.