Simulink escape with delete_block

Question

I'm trying to used MATLAB delete_block function, which given a simulink block path deletes the block. Unfortunately if the name of the block includes a / it is unable to delete the block because of / escaping. If for example the full path is:

system/subsystem/outputBlock[rad/s]

delete_block fails deleting the block (without reporting any failure). In a warning message, which is not generated by the the delete_block function, I spotted that the path of the block is reported to be: system/subsystem/outputBlock[rad//s] (with the last / escaped). So probably what happens is that the path is escaped and is not found since instead of searching for system/subsystem/outputBlock[rad/s], delete_block searches for system/subsystem/outputBlock[rad//s]. To verify this, I tried by changing the name of the block manually by removing the last / and the delete_block function works. How can I delete blocks whose name in the pathname includes a /?

Answer 1

Hope, I can help here. The // is the escape sequence for the / character. If you want to delete blocks with the // in the name, I think it best to recurse down the tree to get the fully qualified name and escape any / at each point.

% get the name of the block you want to delete, we'll just use gcb() for now
blk = gcb;
nameList = {};
% get the name of this block
currBlk = get_param(blk,'Name')
nameList{end+1} = currBlk;
% get the name of the root block diagram
rootName = bdroot(blk)
while( ~strcmp(get_param(blk,'Parent'),rootName) )
  currBlk = get_param(blk,'Parent');
  nameList{end+1} = get_param(currBlk,'Name');
end
nameList{end+1} = rootName;
% for completeness, here's a naive attempt to reconstruct the path
str='';
for ii=length(nameList):-1:1
  str = [str strrep(nameList{ii},'/','//') '/' ];
end
str(end) = []; % get rid of the last '/'

HTH!