In MATLAB, you can use the built-in fileparts function to get the path to the parent directory of a given file or folder. Here's how you can use it:
Example 1: Get parent directory of a file
Suppose you have a file C:\Users\John\Documents\MyFile.txt on a Windows computer and you want to get the path to its parent directory. You can use the fileparts function in the following way:
filePath = 'C:\Users\John\Documents\MyFile.txt';
[parentDir, ~, ~] = fileparts(filePath);
disp(parentDir);
This will output C:\Users\John\Documents.
Example 2: Get parent directory of a folder
Suppose you have a folder C:\Users\John\Documents\MyFolder on a Windows computer and you want to get the path to its parent directory. You can use the fileparts function in the following way:
folderPath = 'C:\Users\John\Documents\MyFolder';
[parentDir, ~, ~] = fileparts(folderPath);
disp(parentDir);
This will output C:\Users\John\Documents.
Note that the second and third output arguments of the fileparts function are used to get the file name and file extension, respectively, and we ignore them by placing the tilde (~) symbol in their place.