Use of dialogue boxes: interactively choosing directory and file to read at the beginning, and "save as" at the end, during the execution of script.

I have script that works fine, however since it has not to run only on my pc, I would like to have a script that does not have a fixed directory for looking for txt files at the beginning and one for saving at the end. I would like to have the possibility to choose the text file I have to read at the beginning of the script, and decide where and under what name I want to save the output file when I export my final variable into txt file in the end. I would like to do it interactively using simple dialogue box during the execution of the script. Can anyone help with that? Below is my script.

dir_files='C:\Users\IC5\Desktop\Matlab task';

dir_save='C:\Users\IC5\Desktop\Matlab task\save';

lista=dir(fullfile(dir_files, '*.txt'));

nuova_variabile=[];

nuova_variabile2=[];

for i=1:length(lista)

    filename=lista(i).name;

    fid=fopen(fullfile(dir_files,filename));

    dati=textscan(fid, '%s');

    data=dati{1,1};

    for j=1:length(data);

    if strncmp('$SDDBT',data(j,1), 6)==1;

    nuova_variabile=[nuova_variabile; (data(j,1))];

    elseif strncmp('$GPGLL',data(j,1), 6)==1; 

    nuova_variabile=[nuova_variabile; (data(j,1))];
        end
    end
end

b=char(nuova_variabile);

c=cellstr(b(:,1:6));

idx=strcmp(c,'$SDDBT')';

ii=[1 diff(idx)];

out=nuova_variabile(find(ii~=0));

% then add

ne=ceil(numel(out)/2);

out=cellfun(@(x,y) [x ' ' y],out(1:2:end), out(2:2:end),'un',0);

expression = ' ';

replace = ',';

out2= regexprep(out,expression,replace);

path_file=fullfile('C:\Users\IC5\Desktop\Matlab task\save','output2.txt');

fid=fopen(path_file,'wt');

x=out2;

[rows,cols]=size(x);

for i=1:rows

    fprintf(fid,'%s,',x{i,:})

    fprintf(fid,'%s\n',x{i,end})

end

fclose(fid);

Thanks in advance

Manuela

Answer 1

[Tom]

see the UIGETFILE and UIPUTFILE functions.

doc uigetfile
doc uiputfile

Answer 2

[mb1400]

Yes I did, but it give me an error during the execution of the script and I did not work out what I was doing wrong. I will try again and will come back with the error. Thanks for your answer.

[Sean de Wolski]

What error? How are you calling them?

Answer 3

[mb1400]

Thank you for the advice. I solved it, it was actually a quite easy thing, that how I did it:

[stmfile, stmpath] = uigetfile('*.txt', 'pick text file');

data = importdata(fullfile(stmpath, stmfile), '%s');

% for the import

[filename, pathname] = uiputfile('*.txt','Save file name');

path_file=fullfile(pathname,filename);

fid=fopen(path_file,'wt');

%for the export

=D