Incorect output from the "fileparts" function

Hi everyone

Here is a quick shot of my current problem:

I simply don't understand why the following commands:

 Filename = 'Animation_28-Nov-2012 01:06:20_.avi';
 [pathstr, baseFile, extProvided ] = fileparts(Filename);

are giving the following results:

 pathstr = Animation_28-Nov-2012 01:06:\

 baseFile = 20_

 extProvided = .avi

Indeed, as you can notice, after the second ":" character is added a "\" which is interpreted as the file path of the file.

Why is there a "\" character ?! I simply don't understand. I tried to go through the help file but without any success.

Any idea would be very helpful, thank you for your help.

[John Petersen]

What OS are you using? Windows doesn't allow colons (:) in the filename. So it seems that fileparts understands the text up to the last : to be the path and the rest of the string to be the filename.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

In MS Windows, colons in filenames indicate device prefixes.

You can read the source code for fileparts. When executing on MS Windows, if there is no / or \ in the name, then the path is considered to extend to the last ':'

Answer 2

[Greg]

Oooookay well done guys. Indeed this code was executed on Windows 7.

For the record I simply added this line before, in order to clean "Filename":

Filename = regexprep(Filename,'[: ]','-');

Thanks for all your answers and comments guys!

Answer 3

[per isakson]

Windows 7 help says:

    Which characters can't be used in a file name?
    You can't use any of the following characters in a file name: \ / ? : * " > < |

However, on a Windows system it is possible to create files, with invalid names. Don't ask me how, but I know because I get such files sent to me.

Obviously, filepart doesn't check for the validity of the file name.

[Jan]

While "C:\" is the disk C, "C:" is the current folder on the disk C. Therefore Matlab appends a backslash after a colon.

You can create invalid filenames using the low-level functions. The most ugly way is to write directly in the name table of the file system. It's like using a MEX function to create field names like the empty string or a space. It works using dynamic field names: "S.('')", but of course Matlab is driven out of its specifications and crashs must be expected.

[Daniel Shub]

I think these limitations are due to Windows and not the filesystem (NTFS). I am pretty sure if I mount an NTFS filesystem with Linux I can create these "invalid" names pretty easily.