which('folderName') - Find the Location of a subdirectory of a directory

Is there a simple way (better than brute force) to treat subdirectories as files and find the subdirectory which is highest on the matlab path?

i.e. if there exists a folder c:\Documents And Settings\user\My Documents\Matlab\myFolderName

whichOverload('myFolderName','dir')
%Should return c:\Documents And Settings\user\My Documents\Matlab\myFolderName

Note that parsing the path does not solve this immediately. The brute force way to do this would be something like

P = regexp(path,'[^;]+','match');
allItems = cellfun(@(x) dir(x),P,'UniformOutput',false);
matches = cellfun(@(x) ismember('myFolderName',{x.name}),allItems);
highestMatch = fullfile(P{find(matches,1)},'myFolderName');

But this is ugly and slow. . .

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Use the what function instead.

[Matthew]

Thank you! That is very simple, and is exactly what I was looking for. Guess I need to polish up more on my documentation search skills!

[Star Strider]

My pleasure!

I remember using it a while back (after a long expedition through the documentation to find it). I had to look it up too just now because I forgot its name. I just knew it was there somewhere.

I’m still discovering new functions and new applications for them, and I’ve been using MATLAB since 1994. MATLAB is a large language, and the documentation reflects that.