Matlab paths and file handling with packages and class folders-CodePudding

So I have the following (simplified) project structure.

scripts/
   client.m
src/
     estimators/
        @estimator1/
            3party/
                shell_script.sh
            estimator1.m

Basically, what I try to do is, calling estimator1.m from client.m. This is working very well, no issues. However, from within estimator1.m I try to call shell_script.sh. The problem, relative paths do not work since it is always looking from the path client.m is called.

What I tried from estimator1.m is:

pathToScript = fullfile('3Party','shell_script');
system(pathToScript);

I would really like to avoid absolute paths since I'd like this package to be used by others as well. So hardcoding paths to my home directory is not good.

CodePudding user response：

Use mfilename('fullpath') to get the full path of the currently executing file. Use fileparts to get just the directory part. Putting it together,

scriptdir = fullfile (fileparts(mfilename('fullpath')), '3Party');

CodePudding user response：

Here is an additional answer to the one by @Edric. My second issue was that I wanted to implement the feature in the parent class since it is a functionality used by all child classes. The proposed answer is perfect when you have the function implemented in the class itself. However:

scriptdir = fullfile (fileparts(mfilename('fullpath')));

would always return the location of my parent class. So I implemented following in the parent class to retrieve the correct location in child classes:

function classdir= getClassDir(obj)             
    [classdir, ~, ~] = fileparts(which(class(obj)));         
end