Is fullfile(0,0) undocumented behavior or bug?

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What is the purpose, if any, of non-char inputs to fullfile?
>> fullfile(0)
> In fullfile>refinePath (line 93)
In fullfile (line 38)
Warning: Inputs must be character arrays or cell arrays of strings.
ans =
0
>> fullfile(0,0)
ans =
\
>> fullfile(0,0,0)
ans =
\ \
>> fullfile(0,0,0,0)
ans =
\ \ \
etc. This is the behavior in R2014b and R2016b on Windows 7 (only versions I tested).

Accepted Answer

Jan
Jan on 18 Apr 2017
Edited: Jan on 18 Apr 2017
This is a bug. fullfile should contain a test, if all inputs are strings or character vectors. This happens for 1 input directly, but for multiple inputs, file sepearators are appended at first such that the elements are converted to character vectors implicitely.
I assume the warning is not correct also, but only a hard error is sufficient to stop the user driving fullfile beyond its purpose.
  3 Comments
Jan
Jan on 18 Apr 2017
uigetfile should be accompanied by a check of a abortion under all circumstances:
[fname, pname] = uigetfile;
if isequal(fname,0) || isequal(pname,0)
disp('User pressed cancel')
...
Omitting this test would be a crude programming style.
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 19 Apr 2017
More generally, isnumeric(fname) instead of comparing to 0.

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