Should it take a long time to WHOS the contents of a .mat file

For certain particular .mat files that I have, it takes "whos -file" a really long time (~10 sec) to give me the summary of the contents of the file. Also, when I highlight the file in the Current Folder window, the pane which is supposed to show the file contents appears empty, even though "whos -file" tells me otherwise. It remains that way no matter how long I wait.

Admittedly, these .mat files contain large data (~1 GB), but should that matter? Isn't the WHOS summary info contained in headers, and therefore shouldn't extracting this info be easy, quick, and reliable?

R2012a

Answer 1

[Sean de Wolski]

Do you have network directories anywhere on your path? If so, remove them and try again. Does this clear it up?

[Matt J]

Nope. All of my path directories are local. Why would it matter, though? The whos() command shouldn't search outside my current directory if the designated file is to be found there, correct?

[Sean de Wolski]

It searches everywhere on the path. For example, even the doc example:

whos('-file','durer.mat')

[Matt J]

You mean it doesn't even stop searching the path when it finds the file?

In any case, it can't be due to overhead from searching the path, because I observe the problem only for files of a sufficiently large size.

[Sean de Wolski]

Well it does appear to only find one.