MATLAB Application Program Interface Reference

Start a MATLAB engine session

integer*4 function engOpen(startcmd)
integer*4 ep
character*(*) startcmd

Arguments

ep

Engine pointer.

startcmd

Character array to start MATLAB process.

Description

This routine allows you to start a MATLAB process for the purpose of using MATLAB as a computational engine.

engOpen(startcmd) starts a MATLAB process using the command specified in startcmd, establishes a connection, and returns a unique engine identifier, or 0 if the open fails.

On the UNIX system, if startcmd is empty, engOpen starts MATLAB on the current host using the command matlab. If startcmd is a hostname, engOpen starts MATLAB on the designated host by embedding the specified hostname string into the larger string:

"rsh hostname \"/bin/csh -c 'setenv DISPLAY\
    hostname:0; matlab'\""

If startcmd is anything else (has white space in it, or nonalphanumeric characters), it is executed literally to start MATLAB.

engOpen performs the following steps:

Creates two pipes.
Forks a new process and sets up the pipes to pass stdin and stdout from the child to two file descriptors in the parent.
Executes a command to run MATLAB (rsh for remote execution).

Example

See fengdemo.f in the eng_mat subdirectory of the examples directory for a sample program that illustrates how to call the MATLAB engine functions from a Fortran program.

Note: Fortran engine routines are not available on Windows.

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