how to use waitbar to show file copying status

This is my code under a push button in GUI. I want that it should show the progress of the file copying status with the use of "waitbar" command or by any other means .It will be very helpful if someone can provide a sample code, though help are available in matlab but I m unable to figure it out how it can be used for displaying file copying status. Thanks

% --- Executes on button press in pushbutton44.
function pushbutton44_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)
% hObject    handle to pushbutton44 (see GCBO)
% eventdata  reserved - to be defined in a future version of MATLAB
% handles    structure with handles and user data (see GUIDATA)
global dirpath_import;
dirpath_import= uigetdir();
set(handles.edit38,'String',dirpath_import);
importpath=get(handles.edit38,'String');
exportpath=get(handles.edit1,'String');
copyfile(importpath,exportpath);
msgbox('Import/Copy Complete');

Answer 1

[Jan]

While it does not matter, that the code is part of a callback, the relevant part is only:

copyfile(importpath, exportpath)

During this command Matlab is blocked an there is no chance for any progress indicators. If this is really required, you can create your own function to copy the file in blocks of e.g. 1MB:

function myCopyFile(source, dest)

FileInfo = dir(source);
FileSize = FileInfo.bytes;
waitH    = waitbar(0, sprintf('Copying %.2f MB', FileSize/1e6);

inFID = fopen(source, 'r');
if inFID == -1
  error('Cannot open file for reading: %s', source);
end

outFID = fopen(dest, 'w');
if outFID == -1, 
  fclose(inFID);
  error('Cannot open file for writing: %s', dest);
end

chunk  = 1e6;
nChunk = ceil(FileSize / chunk);
iChunk = 0;
while ~feof(inFID)
  iChunk = iChunk + 1;
  waitbar(iChunk / nChunk, waitH);
  data = fread(inFID, chunk, '*uint8');
  fwrite(outFID, data, 'uint8');
end
fclose(inFID);
fclose(outFID);
end

UNTESTED

Attention: File handling is a critical job. If the disk is full or the destination is on a network drive and loosing the connection, this cheap and naive implementation of a copyfile does not show a warning and might leave the file system in a corrupted state. The user can kill the copying by Ctrl-c also. I would not dare to do this in a productive system. Care for backups. Check the file system. Insert consistency checks, e.g. by counting the number or read and written bytes by catching the output of fread and fwrite.

[Amit]

Thank u very much.Your insight was very much helpful.I will try to improvise the code as suggested by you.Your sample code worked..Thanks again..

[Amit]

Hi Sir, Your help was able to solve my problem(for file copying) but I m stuck again. What I want to do is copy a folder (total content of the folder). So can u guide how to proceed. I m unable to get the Folder size. Thanks in advance

[Jan]

function S = GetFolderSize(FilePath)
% Get size of files contained in a folder
% Author: Jan Simon, Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0
FileList = dir(FilePath);
FileList(ismember({FileList.name}, {'.', '..'})) = [];
isFolder = [FileList.isdir];
S        = sum([FileList(~isFolder).bytes]);  % Sum file file sizes
for iFile = find(isFolder)                    % Recursion for folders
  S = S + GetFolderSize(fullfile(FilePath, FileList(iFile).name));
end
end

UNTESTED Note that running this can need a lot of time already.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

You could use system() to start the copy, and you could add the & character to the command so that it returns immediately. Then you could go into a loop using dir() to check the size of the destination file and use that to update a waitbar.

However, watch out for these factors:

• on some operating systems, there is no visible result in the target directory until the point at which the copy finishes, at which time the file suddenly appears, complete.
• on MacOS, the temporary file that appears is typically named as the file name plus a ".part" extension, so it would be that file name whose size you had to monitor

[Amit]

Thanx...i think what u have suggested will be system dependent..rather i wanted to make it system independent so that portability of code is not an issue..