GNU Octave Manual Version 3 by John W. Eaton, David Bateman, Søren Hauberg Paperback (6"x9"), 568 pages ISBN 095461206X RRP £24.95 ($39.95) |
32.2 Filesystem Utilities
Octave includes the following functions for renaming and deleting files, creating, deleting, and reading directories, and for getting information about the status of files.
- Built-in Function: [err, msg] = rename (old, new)
- Change the name of file old to new.
If successful, err is 0 and msg is an empty string. Otherwise, err is nonzero and msg contains a system-dependent error message.
See also ls, dir
- Built-in Function: [err, msg] = link (old, new)
- Create a new link (also known as a hard link) to an existing file.
If successful, err is 0 and msg is an empty string. Otherwise, err is nonzero and msg contains a system-dependent error message.
See also symlink
- Built-in Function: [err, msg] = symlink (old, new)
- Create a symbolic link new which contains the string old.
If successful, err is 0 and msg is an empty string. Otherwise, err is nonzero and msg contains a system-dependent error message.
See also link, readlink
- Built-in Function: [result, err, msg] = readlink (symlink)
- Read the value of the symbolic link symlink.
If successful, result contains the contents of the symbolic link symlink, err is 0 and msg is an empty string. Otherwise, err is nonzero and msg contains a system-dependent error message.
See also link, symlink
- Built-in Function: [err, msg] = unlink (file)
- Delete the file named file.
If successful, err is 0 and msg is an empty string. Otherwise, err is nonzero and msg contains a system-dependent error message.
- Built-in Function: [files, err, msg] = readdir (dir)
- Return names of the files in the directory dir as a cell array of
strings. If an error occurs, return an empty cell array in files.
If successful, err is 0 and msg is an empty string. Otherwise, err is nonzero and msg contains a system-dependent error message.
See also dir, glob
- Built-in Function: [status, msg, msgid] = mkdir (dir)
- Built-in Function: [status, msg, msgid] = mkdir (parent, dir)
- Create a directory named dir.
If successful, status is 1, with msg and msgid empty character strings. Otherwise, status is 0, msg contains a system-dependent error message, and msgid contains a unique message identifier.
See also rmdir
- Built-in Function: [status, msg, msgid] = rmdir (dir)
- Built-in Function: [status, msg, msgid] = rmdir (dir,
"s"
) - Remove the directory named dir.
If successful, status is 1, with msg and msgid empty character strings. Otherwise, status is 0, msg contains a system-dependent error message, and msgid contains a unique message identifier.
If the optional second parameter is supplied with value
"s"
, recursively remove all subdirectories as well.See also mkdir, confirm_recursive_rmdir
- Built-in Function: val = confirm_recursive_rmdir ()
- Built-in Function: old_val = confirm_recursive_rmdir (new_val)
- Query or set the internal variable that controls whether Octave will ask for confirmation before recursively removing a directory tree.
- Built-in Function: [err, msg] = mkfifo (name, mode)
- Create a fifo special file named name with file mode mode
If successful, err is 0 and msg is an empty string. Otherwise, err is nonzero and msg contains a system-dependent error message.
- Built-in Function: umask (mask)
- Set the permission mask for file creation. The parameter mask is an integer, interpreted as an octal number. If successful, returns the previous value of the mask (as an integer to be interpreted as an octal number); otherwise an error message is printed.
- Built-in Function: [info, err, msg] = stat (file)
- Built-in Function: [info, err, msg] = lstat (file)
- Return a structure s containing the following information about
file.
dev
- ID of device containing a directory entry for this file.
ino
- File number of the file.
mode
-
File mode, as an integer. Use the functions
S_ISREG
,S_ISDIR
,S_ISCHR
,S_ISBLK
,S_ISFIFO
,S_ISLNK
, orS_ISSOCK
to extract information from this value. modestr
- File mode, as a string of ten letters or dashes as would be returned by ls -l.
nlink
- Number of links.
uid
- User ID of file's owner.
gid
- Group ID of file's group.
rdev
- ID of device for block or character special files.
size
- Size in bytes.
atime
-
Time of last access in the same form as time values returned from
time
. See section 32.1 Timing Utilities. mtime
-
Time of last modification in the same form as time values returned from
time
. See section 32.1 Timing Utilities. ctime
-
Time of last file status change in the same form as time values
returned from
time
. See section 32.1 Timing Utilities. blksize
- Size of blocks in the file.
blocks
- Number of blocks allocated for file.
If the call is successful err is 0 and msg is an empty string. If the file does not exist, or some other error occurs, s is an empty matrix, err is -1, and msg contains the corresponding system error message.
If file is a symbolic link,
stat
will return information about the actual file that is referenced by the link. Uselstat
if you want information about the symbolic link itself.For example,
[s, err, msg] = stat ("/vmlinuz") => s = { atime = 855399756 rdev = 0 ctime = 847219094 uid = 0 size = 389218 blksize = 4096 mtime = 847219094 gid = 6 nlink = 1 blocks = 768 mode = -rw-r--r-- modestr = -rw-r--r-- ino = 9316 dev = 2049 } => err = 0 => msg =
- Built-in Function: [info, err, msg] = lstat (file)
- See stat.
- Function File: [status, msg, msgid] = fileattrib (file)
- Return information about file.
If successful, status is 1, with result containing a structure with the following fields:
Name
- Full name of file.
archive
- True if file is an archive (Windows).
system
- True if file is a system file (Windows).
hidden
- True if file is a hidden file (Windows).
directory
- True if file is a directory.
UserRead
GroupRead
OtherRead
- True if the user (group; other users) has read permission for file.
UserWrite
GroupWrite
OtherWrite
- True if the user (group; other users) has write permission for file.
UserExecute
GroupExecute
OtherExecute
- True if the user (group; other users) has execute permission for file.
If an attribute does not apply (i.e., archive on a Unix system) then the field is set to NaN.
With no input arguments, return information about the current directory.
If file contains globbing characters, return information about all the matching files.
See also glob
- Function File: isdir (f)
- Return true if f is a directory.
- Built-in Function: glob (pattern)
- Given an array of strings (as a char array or a cell array) in
pattern, return a cell array of file names that match any of
them, or an empty cell array if no patterns match. Tilde expansion
is performed on each of the patterns before looking for matching file
names. For example,
glob ("/vm*") => "/vmlinuz"
See also dir, ls, stat, readdir
- Built-in Function: fnmatch (pattern, string)
- Return 1 or zero for each element of string that matches any of
the elements of the string array pattern, using the rules of
filename pattern matching. For example,
fnmatch ("a*b", {"ab"; "axyzb"; "xyzab"}) => [ 1; 1; 0 ]
- Built-in Function: file_in_path (path, file)
- Built-in Function: file_in_path (path, file, "all")
- Return the absolute name of file if it can be found in
path. The value of path should be a colon-separated list of
directories in the format described for
path
. If no file is found, return an empty matrix. For example,file_in_path (EXEC_PATH, "sh") => "/bin/sh"
If the second argument is a cell array of strings, search each directory of the path for element of the cell array and return the first that matches.
If the third optional argument
"all"
is supplied, return a cell array containing the list of all files that have the same name in the path. If no files are found, return an empty cell array.See also file_in_loadpath
- Built-in Function: tilde_expand (string)
- Performs tilde expansion on string. If string begins with a
tilde character, (‘~’), all of the characters preceding the first
slash (or all characters, if there is no slash) are treated as a
possible user name, and the tilde and the following characters up to the
slash are replaced by the home directory of the named user. If the
tilde is followed immediately by a slash, the tilde is replaced by the
home directory of the user running Octave. For example,
tilde_expand ("~joeuser/bin") => "/home/joeuser/bin" tilde_expand ("~/bin") => "/home/jwe/bin"
- Built-in Function: [cname, status, msg] canonicalize_file_name (name)
- Return the canonical name of file name.
- Function File: [status, msg, msgid] = movefile (f1, f2)
- Move the file f1 to the new name f2. The name f1
may contain globbing patterns. If f1 expands to multiple file
names, f2 must be a directory.
If successful, status is 1, with msg and msgid empty\n\ character strings. Otherwise, status is 0, msg contains a\n\ system-dependent error message, and msgid contains a unique\n\ message identifier.\n\
See also glob
- Function File: [status, msg, msgid] = copyfile (f1, f2, force)
- Copy the file f1 to the new name f2. The name f1
may contain globbing patterns. If f1 expands to multiple file
names, f2 must be a directory. If force is given and equals
the string "f" the copy operation will be forced.
If successful, status is 1, with msg and msgid empty\n\ character strings. Otherwise, status is 0, msg contains a\n\ system-dependent error message, and msgid contains a unique\n\ message identifier.\n\
See also glob, movefile
- Function File: [dir, name, ext, ver] = fileparts (filename)
- Return the directory, name, extension, and version components of
filename.
See also fullfile
- Built-in Function: filesep ()
- Return the system-dependent character used to separate directory names.
See also pathsep, dir, ls
- Function File: filename = fullfile (dir1, dir2, ..., file)
- Return a complete filename constructed from the given components.
See also fileparts
- Function File: dir = tempdir ()
- Return the name of the system's directory for temporary files.
- Function File: filename = tempname ()
- This function is an alias for
tmpnam
.
- Built-in Function: P_tmpdir ()
- Return the default name of the directory for temporary files on this system. The name of this directory is system dependent.
ISBN 095461206X | GNU Octave Manual Version 3 | See the print edition |