Matlab paths and file handling with packages and class folders

Question

So I have the following (simplified) project structure.

scripts/
   client.m
src/
    +estimators/
        @estimator1/
            3party/
                shell_script.sh
            estimator1.m 
                

Basically, what I try to do is, calling estimator1.m from client.m. This is working very well, no issues. However, from within estimator1.m I try to call shell_script.sh. The problem, relative paths do not work since it is always looking from the path client.m is called.

What I tried from estimator1.m is:

pathToScript = fullfile('3Party','shell_script');
system(pathToScript);
    

I would really like to avoid absolute paths since I'd like this package to be used by others as well. So hardcoding paths to my home directory is not good.

Answer 1

Use mfilename('fullpath') to get the full path of the currently executing file. Use fileparts to get just the directory part. Putting it together,

scriptdir = fullfile (fileparts(mfilename('fullpath')), '3Party');

Answer 2

Here is an additional answer to the one by @Edric. My second issue was that I wanted to implement the feature in the parent class since it is a functionality used by all child classes. The proposed answer is perfect when you have the function implemented in the class itself. However:

scriptdir = fullfile (fileparts(mfilename('fullpath')));

would always return the location of my parent class. So I implemented following in the parent class to retrieve the correct location in child classes:

function classdir= getClassDir(obj)             
    [classdir, ~, ~] = fileparts(which(class(obj)));         
end