absolutepath

Computes absolute path from relative paths

Description

Computes absolute path from relative paths. Works on windows and linux. Improves on absolutepath from Jochen Lenz (http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/3857-absolutepath-m).

• Acknowledgements: This submission has inspired the following:; Coverage Report Generator
• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.11 (2010b)

[Abel Brown]

need to check that the path actually exists. You can not resolve the relative path for a file or directory that does not exist!

For example if im in /Users/myName and i call

absolutepath('./some/file/that/dne')

your function returns

/Users/myName/some/file/that/dne/

which is wrong. Should return either

No such file or directory or []

[Jan Simon]

I cannot get it to work:
"cd('D:\Temp'); absolutepath('..')"
replies 'D:\Temp' instead of 'D:\'. "absolutepath('..', 'D:\Temp')" does not help also. "absolutepath('..\Temp')" does not work also. The documentation suggests, that "absolutepath('C:\WINXP', cd)" replies 'C:\WINXP', but the function stops with an error: "The path D:\Temp\C:\WINXP\ or file D:\Temp\C:\WINXP does not exist". For the same reasons, I cannot obtain the absolute path for e.g. "C:\WINXP\..".
The only valid results can be obtained, if a (nested) subfolder of the specified basefolder oder current directory is wanted.
"absolutepath('.', 'D:\')" replies 'D:', which differs from the correct 'D:\'.
The documentation is almost very good (H1 line, author, list of changes, syntax and examples), but the 2nd example 'A:\MyProject' seems to be unsolvable by the function (of course with an adjusted path name).
The function is rather slow: It needs 2.5 sec to convert the names of 837 M-files. GetFullPath from the FEX needs 0.05 sec for the same task.
Although the function is buggy, slow and works with a very limited sort of input, I really like the clear, simple and complete documentation and rate it with 3 stars.

[Jonathan Karr]

Thanks for the comments Jan. I completely departed from the original code I tried to patch from Jochen Lenz, and greatly simplified and sped the function per your suggestions. In my brief tests I find the new version is 10X faster (although still 5X slower than the mex file).

[Jan Simon]

Dear Jonathan, Thanks for updating your submission. The program is much faster now!
I still cannot process the example from the help section:
absolutepath('A:\MyProject\', 'C:\local\');
I tried is as:
absolutepath('C:\WinXP', cd)
But get a java.io.IOException "bad syntax for file name".
I think it is necessary to mention in the help section, that the file or folder must exist. And the important 3rd input should be explained also.