Cannot save a .m file

Its simple and It has been asked a 100 times on the forum. New >> Script a= 1; b= 2; c = a+b; bla bla blah save. - does not work , the file is not saved I have no clue what is happening. Please help

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

Simple. You probably do not have write access to that directory. You cannot write a file to a directory where you are not allowed to write. Period. In some rare cases, you simply lack the room to write a file, but that would be RARE.

This is not a MATLAB issue, but your computer.

Either choose a directory where you do have write access, or change the permissions on that directory. Again, this is not in the control of MATLAB.

[James Cavenaugh]

John, if it were that simple, do you think it would be asked "100 times" as Manjunath exaggeratingly stated? I've got this problem too, and I certainly have write permission to the folder in question. I can open a text editor (I use Notepad++), save the code there along the lines of "my_function.m" and it saves just fine. That's a work-around, not a solution. Clearly I have write permission. It DOES have to do with Matlab, someway, somehow. Matlab ignores its Save and Save As commands, somehow. By the way, I tried the advice posted at https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/newsreader/view_thread/325983 and got this:

>> [fid, errormessage] = fopen('test1.m', 'wt')
fid =
     3
     errormessage =
0×0 empty char array
>> [fid, errormessage] = fopen('is_even.m', 'wt')
fid =
     4
     errormessage =
0×0 empty char array

In these cases a blank file was created, just not when trying to save a new, untitled .m file using Matlab's editor.

My Matlab editor was still open, so I then tried to save it again, after selecting the (blank) .m file with the name "is_even.m". I clicked Save, the editor asked if I wanted to overwrite the existing file of the same name, I affirmed I did, and it looked as if it succeeded in that there was no error given. So then I wanted to check this, and I opened up the file in Notepad++, but alas, the file was still blank. I selected all from the Matlab editor, pasted it into the Notepadd++ editor, and saved it. I tried to edit again in the Matlab editor, clicked Save, but I noticed that instead of Save, it was Save As that was asking me if I wanted to overwrite the existing file. Why is Save As being activated when Save should be? The file already exists and I should be able to save changes to it. I shut down and restarted Matlab, selected the file, made a small edit, and saved it just fine. Obviously: (1) other people have this problem, so it seems pretty common, (2) it's been around a while (I'm using 2017A on a Windows 7 machine, but it's been around since at least 2013 or 2014), (3) it's a Matlab issue, not a file permissions issue, and (4) it's got an easy enough workaround but it still should've been fixed a couple of years ago; it's a real annoyance.

Answer 2

[Mate Misho]

I had a similar problem and solved it. Whoever reads this should check his folderpath if any folder name has a space. I changed it to '_' and saving worked just fine.

Answer 3

[Bao Le]

Check the folder where you save it and check the path