Problems with "help" and "doc" in R2014b

After installing R2014b, help and doc commands no longer work correctly. Is there a fix? Some background:

• help followed by any function name returns a fileparts error (example below)
• doc sometimes crashes Matlab, sometimes results in an error (example below), and sometimes opens up a help window as expected

help clear % Trying to display command window help for "clear" function
Error using fileparts
Too many output arguments.
Error in makehelphyper (line 73)
[unused fcnName unused unused] = fileparts(fcnName);
Error in help>displayHelp (line 211)
    helpStr = makehelphyper('help', pathname, JRI_linkableTopic,
    helpStr);
Error in help (line 130)
        displayHelp(helpStr, topic, usejava('desktop'));

doc quantile % Trying to open standalone help window for "quantile" function
Too many output arguments.
Error in help (line 138)
    [varargout{1:nargout}] = [helpStr moreInfo];
Error in help2xml (line 48)
[helpstr, docTopic] = help(topic, helpCommandOption);
Error in help2html (line 20)
[helpNode, helpstr, fcnName, found] = help2xml(dom, topic, pagetitle,
helpCommandOption);
Error in helpwin (line 76)
    html = help2html(topic,pagetitle,helpCommandOption);
Error in doc>showHelpwin (line 221)
    foundTopic = helpwin(topic, '', '', '-doc');
Error in doc (line 112)
            if ~showHelpwin(topic)
138     [varargout{1:nargout}] = [helpStr moreInfo];

[Adam]

Do you have a function of your own named fileparts?

[K E]

Only this, C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2014b\toolbox\matlab\iofun\fileparts.m

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

It looks like it's using a help command from an earlier release (fileparts does not currently support four outputs)

Try refreshing the path

restoredefaultpath
rehash toolboxcache

If it works after that;

savepath

[K E]

It worked! Thanks for solving this - you don't miss the water (in this case, the help command) until the well runs dry. Intriguingly some of my personal directories were removed from my saved path afterwards, though I can't see why.

[Sean de Wolski]

restoredefaultpath is a nuke it from orbit approach.

[K E]

[If someone is thinking of trying this solution, I suggest copying pathdef.m to a temporary file first, so you can restore your personal path directories afterward.]