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It took me a lot of searching on Octave wiki, documentation etc., to finally find a way to change Octave working directory at startup; when typing system('set') at the Octave command prompt, it lists all environment variables, i.a. USERPROFILE=C:\Users\me. But I want the program to load C:\Users\me\Octave instead.

A possible solution consists in adding the following lines 

setenv("USERPROFILE", "C:\\Users\\me\\Octave");
cd(getenv("USERPROFILE"));

to C:\Octave\Octave-4.0.3\share\octave\4.0.3\m\startup\octaverc.

However, this appears a bit clumpsy to me. It changes the environment variable USERPROFILE at each Octave startup and then tells the program to use it as the working directory. Isn't there a way to permanently change USERPROFILE, maybe on the Windows command line?

Community
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winkmal
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  • Note that in the graphical version there is a setting to make octave start from the last used directory. This isn't what you're asking, but it may well be what you're trying to achieve. – Tasos Papastylianou Aug 30 '16 at 18:37
  • [Here](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-octave/2012-05/msg00296.html) is the instruction about how to achieve what @TasosPapastylianou said. But I could not get it working, so instead, I added `cd("pwd")` to my .octaverc file. – Quazi Irfan Sep 23 '17 at 04:42

3 Answers3

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Octave does not care where it starts and is not configured to start in any place. When you start Octave, its working directory will be whatever directory you were when you started it.

This makes a lot more sense when you do things in the command line which I guess is not your case. When you double click on an icon to start an application, like Octave, your system needs to start it somewhere. How to configure this will be system-dependent. Try right click on your the Octave icon, and in the properties menu look for something about configuring the start directory.

However, if your idea of how Octave should work is that it should always move to a specific directory, then I would use the .octaverc as you are now --- but I would just do cd ("..."), no need to set USERPROFILE. That will ensure that Octave always changes directory there, no matter how start Octave.

carandraug
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If you are using Octave Workbench, it's easy to change the directory using File Browser window by clicking on the wheel button and click "Set Browsing Directory", choose your respective directory and click ok. This changes your current directory. Can also be verified using pwd command.

Malay Revanth
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In the current Octave GUI you can select Edit->Preferences and on the "General" tab at the bottom is an option to set your start up directory. Optionally you can just click the box to have it restart from that last used working directory.

Slubgob
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