In a filesystem, there are two kinds of paths: relative paths and absolute paths. Absolute paths always point to the same target while the target of a relative path depends on the current working directory. In Matlab, paths are called "path names" and there is a third kind of path name: the partial path name. It is defined as follows:

A partial path name is the last portion of a full path name for a location on the MATLAB search path.

(The Matlab search path is similar to the environment variable PATH and is used to locate Matlab files.) In consequence of this definition, a path name may be treated by Matlab as a partial path name even if the user is unaware of them.

In this post, I will demonstrate Matlab behavior that is unexpected if you are not aware of the existence of partial path names. I will also explain how this causes a bug in xUnit 3 and xUnit 4.

Continue reading Matlab: Unawareness of Partial Path Names may cause Bugs →