engOpen (C) - Start MATLAB engine session - MATLAB (original) (raw)

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Start MATLAB engine session

C Syntax

#include "engine.h" Engine *engOpen(const char *startcmd);

Description

engOpen starts a MATLAB® process for using MATLAB as a computational engine.

Windows Platforms

engOpen launches MATLAB without a desktop.

The function opens a COM channel to MATLAB. The MATLAB software you registered during installation starts. If you did not register during installation, then see Register MATLAB as a COM Server.

UNIX Platforms

On UNIX® systems, engOpen:

1. Creates two pipes.
2. Forks a new process. Sets up the pipes to pass_stdin_ and stdout from MATLAB (parent) software to two file descriptors in the engine program (child).
3. Executes a command to run MATLAB software (rsh for remote execution).

Input Arguments

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MATLAB startup command, specified as const char *.

On Windows® systems, the startcmd string must beNULL.

On UNIX systems:

• If startcmd is NULL or the empty string, then engOpen starts a MATLAB process on the current host using the commandmatlab. If startcmd is ahostname, then engOpen starts a MATLAB process on the designated host by embedding the specifiedhostname string into the larger string:
  "rsh hostname "/bin/csh -c 'setenv DISPLAY\
  hostname:0; matlab'""
• If startcmd is any other string (has white space in it, or nonalphanumeric characters), then MATLAB executes the string literally.

Output Arguments

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Handle to MATLAB engine, specified as Engine *. ReturnsNULL if the open fails.

Examples

To open an example, type:

edit([fullfile(matlabroot,"extern","examples","engmat","filename")]);

where filename is:

• engdemo.c for a C example on UNIX operating systems.
• engwindemo.c for a C example on Microsoft® Windows operating systems.

Version History

Introduced before R2006a

See Also