is it possible to copy a file on itself?

hello

i have some files in current folder which were copieed here from other folder. i have changed content of some of them in the original folder and now i want to copy them again to the current folder. but it says u cant copy a file or directory onto itself.

is there anyway for doing this?

thanks

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

[file,path,indx] = uigetfile( ...
    {'*.DATA;*.PVO;*.PVP;*.PVI;*.slx;*.INC','Eclipse Files (*.DATA,*.INC)';
    '*.PVO;*.PVP;*.PVI;*.INC','PVTi files (*.PVO,*.PVP,*.PVI)';...
    '*.*',  'All Files (*.*)'},'Select a File','MultiSelect', 'on');
if isequal(file,0)
    disp('User selected Cancel');
else
    if ischar(file); file = {file}; end
    file(ismember(file, {'.', '..'})) = [];
    file = fullfile(path, file);
    for i = 1:length(file)
      copyfile(file{i});
    end
end

[Idin Pushkin]

great thanks, Walter. i appreciate for correctimg the code. i benefit and learned too much.

Answer 2

[dpb]

That isn't copying a file onto itself; there's nothing to prevent you doing what you want.

Your copyfile command isn't referencing the alternate folder in the source file it would appear by the error; however, you neglected to show us the command as you wrote it so we can't do more than surmise the cause.

If your current working directory is the target, then

otherdir='c:\that\otherdirectory';
copyfile(fullfile(otherdir,filename),filename)

should have no issues. If you are in the other directory when trying, then

targetdir='c:\that\targetlocation';
copyfile(fullfile(targetdir,filename),filename)

To be sure, wherever you are, use fully-qualified file names for both source and target.

Answer 3

[Idin Pushkin]

i used this code:

clc;

[file,path,indx] = uigetfile( ...
    {'*.DATA;*.PVO;*.PVP;*.PVI;*.slx;*.INC','Eclipse Files (*.DATA,*.INC)';
    '*.PVO;*.PVP;*.PVI;*.INC','PVTi files (*.PVO,*.PVP,*.PVI)';...
    '*.*',  'All Files (*.*)'},'Select a File','MultiSelect', 'on');
if isequal(file,0)
    disp('User selected Cancel');
else
end
[m,n]=size(file);

if ischar(file)
    copyfile(fullfile(path,file));
elseif iscell(file)
    for i=1:n
        copyfile(fullfile(path,file{i}));
        k=strfind(file{i},'.DATA');
    end
else
end

on multiselect mode, suppose i have all files i wanted in my current directory and i have made some changes to these files in the original folder so i want to replace them with the updated files without changing the name of files. in this case usually i have more than one extensions. i use the '.All' extension to do so and it gives:

'Error using copyfile

Cannot copy or move a file or directory onto itself.

Error in testc (line 14)

copyfile(fullfile(path,file));'

there is no problem in case i use files own extension from drop down menu to copy it evenif it exists.

[Walter Roberson]

You copyfile() with only one argument. Which directory do you want the files to end up in?

[ali mohebi]

current directory