making multiple copies of a file

I would like to make multiple copies of a file each of which will have a different name. example: source file: A.txt copies A1.txt, A2.txt... How can I use copyfile and be able to do this? Thanks for inputs

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

copyfile() can only create one copy at a time, so you will need a loop (whether explicit or implicit)

One of numerous possible ways:

sourcefile = 'A.txt';
numcopies = 20;
[path, basename, ext] = fileparts(sourcefile);
filepattern = fullfile(path, [basename '%d.' ext]);
destnames = cellstr(num2str((1:numcopies).', filepattern);
cellfun(@(FID) copyfile(sourcefile, FID), destnames);

[Ram]

Thanks for your input. Is there a way to break up the basename so that I can have the destinations filenames as A11.txt, A21.txt, A31.txt ...

[Walter Roberson]

If those are intended to be consecutive names, then you could change the '%d.' to '%d1.'

Ah, bug fix: the '%d.' should be '%d' or '%d1' (according to your taste); I see from testing that the ext variable will already include the '.' .

[Ram]

I have an error that they are too namy input arguments in the use of the function cellstr. Do you know what might be causing it.

thanks

[Walter Roberson]

Looks like I left off a close bracket:

destnames = cellstr(num2str((1:numcopies).', filepattern));

Answer 2

[Amith]

will this work

copyfile('output2.txt',destnames(i));

[Walter Roberson]

No, destnames here is a cell array of strings, so destnames(i) would be a 1 x 1 cellarray, rather than a string. If you used destnames{i} then that would be a string.

You would need to loop "i" over all of the output string possibilities. The cellfun() that I show is responsible for that.

Answer 3

[Diana Krupnik]

This solution names the files by numbering them, would it be possible to instead change the names based on a table that contains string or text?

Answer 4

[Sam Apoola]

This worked for me

% loop for creating 100 copies

n=100;

for i=1:n
jobname{i}= ['copy', num2str(i),'.txt'];
copyfile('original.txt',jobname{i});
end