Trouble running this script on windows, could you please tell me what i am doing wrong?

the following script runs on my Mac without any problems, but when I try to run the same script on windows (I have made sure the path name and the backslash have been used correctly) it gives me the following error:

the code i am using is:

nfiles      = input('Number of tissue files available: ');

for j = 1:nfiles
DataC = dlmread(sprintf('/Users/srikantasharma/Desktop/Sept-scan/Male/106904(40db)/position-%d.txt',j)); *the code for mac*

the code for windows:

nfiles      = input('Number of tissue files available: ');

for j = 1:nfiles
DataC = dlmread(sprintf('D:\srikantasharma\Desktop\Sept-scan\Male\106904(40db)\position-%d.txt',j));

Error: The file D:cannot open file because: Existenece?memory? permissions?...

When I run an individual file though it seems to run! Could you please tell me what I am doing wrong?

Many thanks.

[Jan]

Is this a complete copy of the error message?

Please use meaningful tags. Almost all questions conern "matlab code" or "code". And I see neither a connection to "image processing" nor to the "matlab compiler". Thanks.

[Srikanta Sharma]

Hello Jan, the complete error message is: The file 'D:' could not be opened because: Cannot open file. Existence? Permissions? Memory? . . .

Error in ==> automated_image at 8 DataC = dlmread(sprintf('D:\Dec-30Days-2013\30-days-SI\128765(40 db)\position-%d.txt',j));

[Jan]

SPRINTF cannot run correctly, when the format strings contains backslashes "\", because they are interpreted as escape characters. I have posted a working solution already: Use FULLFILE to join path and filename, and SPRINTF for the file name only.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Change the backslashes to forward slashes. Forward slashes are acceptable to MS Windows.

The problem you have is that you have backslash sequences such as \D inside the format string for sprintf. backslashes are special in formats. For example, \t means tab and \r means carriage return.

If you prefer to write the names in terms of backslashes then recode as

DataC = dlmread(sprintf('%s%d%s','D:\srikantasharma\Desktop\Sept-scan\Male\106904(40db)\position-', j, '.txt'));

[Srikanta Sharma]

Thank you Walter. The program works now.

Answer 2

[Jan]

The error message is clear: Please check if the file exists:

if isunix
  base = '\';
else
  base = 'D:\';
end

folder = fullfile(base, 'srikantasharma\Desktop\Sept-scan\Male\106904(40db)');
for j = 1:nfiles
  File = fullfile(folder, sprintf('position-%d.txt',j));
  try 
    dataC = dlmread(File);
  catch
    if exist(File, 'file') ~= 2
      error('Missing file: %s', File);
    else
      error('Cannot read existinmg file: %s', File);
    end
  end
end