How can I copy a folder into another folder?
128 views (last 30 days)
Show older comments
In my current folder I have created two empty folders, one is "Folder1" and the other is "Folder2" and I want to copy one of these folders to another one by writing code in a matlab script. I used both of these commands:
copyfile('Folder1','Folder2')
copyfile('Folder1','C:\Users\st1azamiki\Desktop\new\Folder2')
But these commands do not copy the Folder1 inside the Folder2. Do not produce an error also. What am I doing wrong? How can I copy a Folder from a particular path to another particular path?
![](https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/167545/image.jpeg)
2 Comments
Jan
on 26 Sep 2017
Please post the orignial command. "does not copy the Folder1 inside the Folder2" does not allow to know, what happens instead. Do you get an error message or is the folder copied somewhere else? Without the code and a description what happens, it is hard to suggest an improvement.
Accepted Answer
Jan
on 27 Sep 2017
Edited: Jan
on 27 Sep 2017
copyfile('Folder1', 'Folder2') copies the contents of Folder1 into Folder2:
cd(tempdir);
mkdir('Folder1')
mkdir('Folder2')
fid = fopen('Folder1\test.txt', 'w');
fclose(fid);
copyfile('Folder1', 'Folder2')
dir('Folder2')
Now Folder2 contains a copy of test.txt. But you want Folder2 to contain an instance of Folder1. Then do this explicitly:
copyfile('Folder1', 'Folder2\Folder1')
Now the contents of the (empty or non-empty) Folder1 is copied to Folder2\Folder1.
I used relative path names here for compactness. The problem of your command was not the absolute path, but the missing of the name of the destination folder. In productive code a GUI or timer callback can change the current folder, therefore I use absolute path names in every case:
Folder1 = fullfile(tempdir, 'Folder1');
Folder1 = fullfile(tempdir, 'Folder2');
copyfile(Folder1, fullfile(Folder2, 'Folder1'));
See Also
Categories
Find more on Interactive Control and Callbacks in Help Center and File Exchange
Community Treasure Hunt
Find the treasures in MATLAB Central and discover how the community can help you!
Start Hunting!