File path handling in MATLAB - Mini Project: Build & Apply

File path handling

📖 Scenario: You are organizing files on your computer. You want to work with file paths to find the folder name, file name, and extension easily.

🎯 Goal: You will create a MATLAB script that extracts the folder path, file name, and file extension from a full file path string.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable with a full file path string

Create variables to hold parts of the file path

Use MATLAB functions to split the file path into folder, name, and extension

Display the extracted parts clearly

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Handling file paths is important when working with files and folders on your computer. It helps you organize, find, and manage files easily.

💼 Career

Many jobs in data analysis, programming, and IT require working with file paths to read and save files correctly.

1

Create the full file path string

Create a variable called fullPath and set it to the string 'C:\Users\Alice\Documents\report.pdf'.

MATLAB

% Create the variable fullPath with the exact file path string
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use single quotes for strings in MATLAB. Use double backslashes to write a single backslash in the string.

2

Prepare variables for folder, name, and extension

Create three variables called folderPath, fileName, and fileExt and set them to empty strings ''.

MATLAB

fullPath = 'C:\Users\Alice\Documents\report.pdf';
% Create empty strings for folderPath, fileName, and fileExt
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Set each variable to two single quotes with nothing between them to make an empty string.

3

Extract folder path, file name, and extension

Use the MATLAB function fileparts with fullPath to assign the folder path to folderPath, the file name to fileName, and the extension to fileExt.

MATLAB

fullPath = 'C:\Users\Alice\Documents\report.pdf';
folderPath = '';
fileName = '';
fileExt = '';
% Use fileparts to split fullPath into folderPath, fileName, and fileExt
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use square brackets to capture multiple outputs from fileparts.

4

Display the extracted parts

Use disp to print the values of folderPath, fileName, and fileExt each on its own line.

MATLAB

fullPath = 'C:\Users\Alice\Documents\report.pdf';
[folderPath, fileName, fileExt] = fileparts(fullPath);
% Display folderPath, fileName, and fileExt using disp
% Your code here

Need a hint?

Use disp(variable) to show the content of each variable.