GenPath toolbox cleanup

[dankessler]

In the matlabScripts directory, @sripada has put a number of handy tools for generating paths from "templates" (which are sort of formulas for concatenation of variables and constants). However, it currently has to be called in an eval statement, which is kind of awkward, so we should rewrite this so that calls like this

curRunDirectory = GenPath(SubjDirTemplate)

will work. SubjDirTemplate might look like '[Exp]/[curSubjDir]/TASK/func/[curRunDir]'

It presumes that the variables Exp, curSubjDir, and curRunDir exist. Here is some sample content

Exp = '/net/data4/MAS'
curSubjDir = '5004'
curRunDir = 'run_01'

With all this in place, the assignment should work, and we'll get

curRunDirectory with a value of '/net/data4/MAS/5004/TASK/func/run_01'

GenPath would need to

1. Parse the template
2. Generate a concatenation/assignment command
3. Evaluate it in the parent environment (otherwise we'd need to pass it Exp and curSubjDir). This should be easy enough with evalin

There are some other options we've discussed adding, like

• Checkpath - Check whether the path generated exists, and if not, return a friendly error message with the failed path
• Makepath - Recursively create any directories necessary for this path to exist. Potentially messy if somebody screws up their template

Standards

I think @mangstad, @sripada, and I came up with some standards for how to prefix variables that will change within loops (e.g. SubjDir would be the cell array holding all the subject directories, curSubjDir would be the current value in the loop), but I don't remember them. Care to chip in guys?

[dankessler]

This is something that I'll try to get fixed ASAP as a number of issues, including #14, will go much smoother with it implemented cleanly.

[sripada]

@mangstad, @dankessler

This is an issue near and dear to my heart. :) So let me chime in:

The list of standardized names is already in the commented help sections of the template files. Here it is again for easy reference:

Variables you can use in your template are:
%%% Exp = path to your experiment directory
%%% iSubject = index for subject
%%% Subject = name of subject from SubjDir (using iSubject as index of row)
%%% iRun = index of run (listed in Column 3 of SubjDir)
%%% Run = name of run from RunDir (using iRun as index of row)
%%% * = wildcard (can only be placed in final part of template)

CheckPath and MakePath will be very helpful. I think 85% of the need to bug Mike, Daniel, and Joe will be alleviated if we tell people they have done their paths wrong!