how can I send commands to 'command window' programly?

Hello. I want to send "commands" to matlab command window programly

1. I opened Matlab "Command window", in mac (Linux) type 'matlab -nodesktop' in terminal.
2. I want to send matlab commends to matlab console (command window) in another terminal, or python script.
3. because, i want to compare the results by matlab version 2010 and 2017, so i will open both version of matlab with no desktop, and run same script in each version using python. how could i do that?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

matlab -nodesktop -r "try; NAME_OF_SCRIPT; catch; end; quit"

is probably the easiest to use, where NAME_OF_SCRIPT is a .m file that has already been created.

If you need to work with input that is not defined ahead of time, then create a named pipe and

matlab -nodesktop < NAMED_PIPE_FILENAME

and write to the named pipe in the place you are generating the input.

If your input generation is by way of a shell derived from the Bourne Shell, then you can use exec and numbered streams and & to start background jobs that you can write to selectively by using the correct output stream number redirection. You would go through that trouble if you were working with the two different MATLAB sessions simultaneously. If you were only working with one session at a time, then you would probably instead use |& to create a co-process and use print -p to send commands to it and read -p to read from it. Which is not to neglect the power of piping the output of a shell script into MATLAB:

./SHELL_SCRIPT_NAME | matlab -nodesktop

[Sungwon Min]

Thank you for your answer.

I also found your first method, but that run matlab and quit again and again in every time. It is inefficient and too havey.

so, i want to run matlab in "command window" mode, and just send commands when I want. could i do that?

[Walter Roberson]

Your choices are

1. redirection from a named pipe
2. redirection from a numbered file descriptor using sh or derivative
3. shell co-process
4. pipe into matlab stdin
5. java robot class
6. pseudoterminal pty

[Sungwon Min]

Thanks for your help, it is little difficult but i could got clue.

I will study your solution. thanks!

[Walter Roberson]

You could also set up matlab as a tcp server and have it listen for connections and receive commands and execute and return values .

If you were using Windows then there would also be the option of using the COM Automation Server interface .

[MrDan]

Walter, could you please extend your solution 1, i.e. launch Matlab with named pipe.

My bash code is this:

mkfifo my_pipe
matlab -nodesktop < my_pipe
echo "ls" > my_pipe

But Matlab won't receive my command.

Thanks!

[Walter Roberson]

I just did a test with

cd /tmp
mkfifo /tmp/myfifo
/Applications/MATLAB_R2019a.app/bin/matlab -nojvm -nodesktop < /tmp/myfifo

then in a different shell window

echo ls >> /tmp/myfifo

The ls did get executed by MATLAB. Which then crashed. And there was no visible output until the crash.