Matlab movefile() deleted my files

Hello everyone,

I have used movefile() to move measurements that have already been evaluated to a subfolder. My source code for this was:

movefile(file, '../Evaluated')

My problem now is that the subfolder is empty and I can no longer find the files on my PC.

Can anyone tell me what has happened and how I can restore the files?

Best regards

Leon

[Stephen23]

What are the three output values from MOVEFILE ?

[Leon]

status =

logical

1

message =

0×0 empty char array

messageId =

0×0 empty char array

[dpb]

What was the value of file when the command was executed?

No chance your working command window would still have what a dir(file) showed prior to the attempt to move is there?

What does

filesep

return on your system?

Unfortunately, if something did go wrong, it's probable the files are gone; one presumes in that case there was something amiss in the target specification, but without access to the actual file system to poke at it, nobody here will be able to tell what that might have been, although what

cd
dir ../Evaluated

returns might be interesting...

[Walter Roberson]

Using / as the file seperator is accepted on all operating systems that MATLAB is supported on.

[Walter Roberson]

movefile(file, '../Evaluated')

Hypothesis: directory ../Evaluated did not exist, and everything has now been moved to the file ../Evaluated

[dpb]

" If source is a folder or is capable of specifying multiple files and destination does not exist, then movefile creates destination."

But it doesn't say whether it will create destination as a directory, true. :(

I've had trouble figuring out how to make movefile do what I wanted occasionally, although I don't know that I've lost real work in doing so, but I virtually always pass this off to the OS instead because I know how it functions unequivocally.

[Walter Roberson]

The reported syntax

movefile(file, '../Evaluated')

hints that file designates a singular file. Probably in a for loop that changes file

[Leon]

You are right, the file name of the imported file is stored in the variable file.

[file path] = uigetfile('*.mat');

The subfolder '/Evaluated' exists, but the files are not moved into it. I used the system browser to search for the missing files and only found links or “Internet files” containing a link to the old folder.

[dpb]

"filesep" was just a roundabout way to ask which OS, Walter...although I presume is Windows...don't know it matters too much, just curious.

Actually the detailed documentation for the source argument is specific

source — File or folder to move
character vector | string scalar
File or folder to move, specified as a character vector or string scalar. To move multiple files or folders, use wildcards (*).
source can be an absolute or relative path when moving local files or folders.

in that it is expecting a single file spec; it doesn't say what it does if that isn't what is given. The above use where the variable file will be that returned from uigetfile would be a character string as called in the code snippet since the Multiselect' option is 'off' by default. I was wondering first if that weren't true and that was what might have caused unexpected behavior.

It would seem, however, that unless the above were in a loop, the expected behavior would have been for one and only one file to have been moved...perhaps this actually occurred over an extended time wherein a specific file was selected, worked on, and then saved?

As noted above, I don't much like the MATLAB implementation of most of the OS functions so I virtually always pass these operations off to the OS...

[Image Analyst]

I wonder if when you did this

[file path] = uigetfile('*.mat');

it overwrote the built-in global vbariable called path, and then maybe that messed up how movefile operates. What was path after you overwrote it? Was it the folder of your .mat file you selected?

You should never use path as a variable name because it will overwrite path. Same for function names and other built-in variables - don't use those names. Use "folder" instead of "path".

[dpb]

That's a good catch, @Image Analyst; while it is local to the function and will go away when it exits, inside the function it will indeed alias the builtin path() function. Whether the builtin movefile uses a reference that will resolve to the equivalent of referencing the local path variable instead of the cached path would take more debugging than have inclination to try to do, but it certainly is not a good idea to have done and has at least a reasonable chance of being involved in the problem if not the root cause.

"Use "folder" instead of "path".

Just as an aside coding practice others may not care for, for such local temporary variables such as here, I opt for short...I'd have written that line as

[f,p] = uigetfile('*.mat');

As temporary locally-used throwaways, there's no need for verbose names; just a mnomenic to keep the two straight is sufficient. My $0.02, imo, ymmv, etc., etc., ... of course.

[Walter Roberson]

[file path] = uigetfile('*.mat');

would only affect the path() function if path() was being used in the body of code directly inside the same script/function or inside a script called from that code. In particular, it would not affect the resolution of path() inside a function called by that code. Changing the path variable is not going to affect the movefile() function.