Why do I receive an error when I use '\' as the delimiter in the TEXTSCAN command?

When I execute the code:

p=cd;

textscan(p,'%s','delimiter','\');

I receive the error:

 ??? Error using ==> textscan

 Delimiter has incorrect \ constant.

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

This change has been incorporated into the documentation in Release 2009b (R2009b). For previous releases, read below for any additional information:

This is an expected behavior in MATLAB. The character '\' is a MATLAB operator and is hence interpreted. In order to pass in the '\' character in its un-interpreted form to the TEXTSCAN command, it needs to be preceeded by the escape character '\'. Therefore, to use '\' as the delimiter in the TEXTSCAN command, execute:

textscan(p,'%s','delimiter','\\');