simplify weird path name

if i have a valid pathname like this:

 C:\folder\\\\subfolder\.\.\..\..\documents\map\dir\\\..\location\

how can i change that to its simplest form in a simple way?

one way i came up with is

 stupidpath='C:\folder\\\\subfolder\.\.\..\..\documents\map\dir\\\..\location\'
 currentpath=cd
 cd stupidpath
 cleverpath = cd
 cd currentpath

and another way would be with strrep, strfind, etc. but that is both quite cumbersome. is there another, easy way?

Answer 1

[Wesley Ooms]

ok, solved myself:

 p='C:\folder\\\\subfolder\.\.\..\..\documents\map\dir\\\..\location\'

 p=p(p~='.')
 p=p(p~='\'|p([2:end end])~='\')

[Slim]

This solution yields 'C:\folder\subfolder\documents\map\dir\location', so it doesn't take into account the relative paths.

I would have expect a result more like 'C:\documents\map\location'

[Stephen23]

Jan Simon's FEX submission GetFullPath returns the correct path:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/28249-getfullpath

http://blogs.mathworks.com/pick/2011/04/01/be-absolute-about-your-relative-path-with-getfullpath/