How can one get uigetdir/uigetfile to remember last opened directory?

Neither uigetdir nor uigetfile remember the last directory selected or the directory of the last file selected. Is there a way to get them to remember last selected directories between invocations?

If there's no built in solution for this, I'll take recommendations for possible workarounds.

Here's my workaround: Save the selected directory path as a matlab workspace variable after each invocation of uigetdir or uigetfile. Then before calling uigetdir or uigetfile, check for the existence of the workspace variable and load it and use that as the initial directory location for uigetdir and uigetfile.

Are there better ways?

[Geoff Hayes]

John - I think that your solution is a good one (I'm not aware of any other means to recall the last selected directory). But to be clear, the workspace variable that you are saving your last selected path to is saved within the GUI (to the handles structure perhaps) rather than to the base workspace, correct?

[John]

I think a variable can be saved to the base workspace (the one seen from the perspective of the command line window) using assignin. Short of editing the uigetfile and uigetdir commands to remember locations, this is to my understanding, one of the simpler workarounds. Saving a variable to a '.mat' file is another possibility, with the benefit that the last used directory becomes persistently stored and is available across sessions.

[Geoff Hayes]

Based on your tags, I had assumed that you had created a GUI (perhaps with GUIDE). If this is the case or even if you have created a programmatic GUI then you should be able to create a variable/field within the handles structure or within the script respectively (and so not have to "pollute" the base workspace).

[dpb]

It can, yes, although that has some danger in that you could, despite all good intentions, manage to create your name to overwrite an existing variable or, more likely, another script or unwary user could clear your carefully saved variable.

It's unfortunate TMW didn't provide a full interface to the OS API to allow users to set the directory on open, but that's the problem with proprietary and "easy to use" app's like Matlab; you get what the vendor thinks you need and is willing to go to the trouble to implement, whereas if one uses a lower level language one can get at the APIs directly at the cost of losing all the packaged other tools. "There is no free lunch". I see looking at the .m file that they seem to have gone to the Java side; perhaps it wouldn't be too much trouble to call it directly altho I really don't know Java at all...

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

As a minor modification: you could use setpref() / getpref() if you want to be able to have the information saved between runs.

Answer 2

[Fabian Torres]

This worked for me

clearvars -except runPath

if exist('runPath', 'var') == 0 || isempty(runPath)
    runPath = 'D:\';
end

runPath = uigetdir(runPath);

if runPath == 0
    clearvars
    return
end

Answer 3

[NIHAD]

download the attach .mlapp file which can be opened using Matlab2016b and higher version. Or follow the following three steps

Step 1: Add a property to variable to store and share data among callbacks

properties (Access = public)
        seleted_folder % Description
end

Step 2: Initilize the variable in step 1 using startup function (you can leave it empty or set a default directory)

function startupFcn(app)
            app.seleted_folder=''; % or app.seleted_folder='C:\Program Files';
 end

Step 3: Browse button callback

 function browseButtonPushed(app, event)
            app.seleted_folder=uigetdir(app.seleted_folder);
            drawnow;
            figure(app.UIFigure)
            if ~isequal(app.seleted_folder,0)
                app.FolderdirectoryLabel.Text=app.seleted_folder;
            else
                app.seleted_folder=app.FolderdirectoryLabel.Text;
            end
        end