Warning: Escape sequence ' ' is not valid. See 'help sprintf' for valid escape sequences

Im trying to create a function that changes the destination folder for some data put into a text file, trouble is that when I try to input an address such as J:\My_Documents\MATLAB into an inputdlg box, and then use sprintf on the answer so that it can be used in

filename = fullfile('Destination','Filename.txt');

sprintf thinks that the \'s in the destination name mean things like \n and \t so it gives me an error saying:

Warning: Escape sequence 'M' is not valid. See 'help sprintf' for valid escape sequences.

and sprintf itself only outputs 'J:' and not the whole destination name is there anyway I can I can change a written answer from an inputdlg box to a useful form for my purpose that doesn't try to do any unwanted formatting on it?

[Star Strider]

You may need to provide more information. I can’t reproduce your problem (R2013b). This code:

Destination = inputdlg({'Destination'})
s = sprintf('%s', char(Destination))

produces this output for s:

s =

J:\My_Documents\MATLAB

with no errors.

[Michael]

Thanks, that works perfectly

[Star Strider]

My pleasure!

(I should have made that an Answer!)

[Noam Greenboim]

I had a similar warning. look at your backslashes (\) maybe you forgot to add a valid letter after them (like \n, \t, etc.).

In this case, the backslash is a part of the string that you want to print. Use double backslash (\\) to print one backslash.

For example: look at the difference between:

fprintf('\nHello')

and

fprintf('\\nHello')

[David Young]

Star Strider: I don't understand what sprintf is doing here. Isn't it the case that for any string s, sprintf('%s', s) is equal to s? So wouldn't

s = char(Destination);

be simpler? Have I missed something?

[Guillaume]

Yes, sprintf('%s', s) doesn't do anything. Usually if you use the %s it's to insert a string into another.

For that matter, the char(s) is also useless, since the values returned by inputdlg are already strings, so

s = Destination;

Would work just as well and you might as well use Destination directly.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Just avoid the situation in the first place . Use forward slashes /. Windows understands them just fine - no problem whatsoever. Perhaps that's not widely known, but yes, Windows is perfectly happy to use /, at least in MATLAB and Windows Explorer. You don't need to use backslashes at all, so don't.

[nik sharma]

Sorry! It didn't work.

[Walter Roberson]

nik sharma, we will need to see your code.

Image Analyst is correct about / being accepted by MS Windows. See https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/06/24/why-is-the-dos-path-character/