Resolving "Permission Denied" when creating a file.

I am currently trying to include an animation in my code, but when I run it, I get an error message saying, "Cannot create file PS4_animation. Permission Denied." How can I resolve this?

[Walter Roberson]

What is your current directory ( pwd ) at the time you are trying to open the file? Do you have write access to that directory?

[Torsten]

To test for write access, try to save a test file there (independent of MATLAB).

[Claire]

Thank you! I ended up just separating the code that was causing the problem by running it on a new page, which seemed to resolve the problem.

Answer 1

[Infinite_king]

Hi claire,

I understand that you are encountering ‘permission denied’ error while creating a file.

It is possible that you might not have read/write access to the file or the folder. To check if you have write access, please refer to the following code snippet,

% Enter the path of the folder/file
nameORpath = 'file_name or folder_path';
% check if the folder exists
if exist(nameORpath) == 7
    disp('folder exists')
else
    disp('folder does not exists')
end

% check if the file exists
if exist(nameORpath) == 2
    disp('file exists')
else
    disp('file does not exists')
end

% check if you have write access
[status, attributes] = fileattrib(nameORpath);
if status && attributes.UserWrite
    disp('You have write access');
else
    disp("You don't have write access");
end

If you don’t have write access, you can obtain the access as follows,

1. Run MATLAB as Administrator if you have windows system.
2. You can obtain the write access through the functions as follows,

fileattrib(nameORpath,'+w')

If you are unable to access the file even after following the above steps, then it is most likely that your user account doesn’t have access to that file/folder.

For more information, kindly refer to the following MATLAB resources about ‘exist’ and ‘fileattrib’ function,

1. https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/exist.html
2. https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/fileattrib.html#bvczjwl

Hope this is helpful.