MATLAB Release Notes

Programming and Data Types Issues

Output from Background and Foreground Commands (UNIX)

In Release 12 on UNIX platforms, a background command (i.e., any system command after which you add a &), such as

• ! cat startup.m &
  

no longer produces any output. Prior to Release 12, a background command sent output to the command window.

If you need to see the output from a command, either do not make the command a background command (i.e., remove the &), or run the background command in a separate xterm. To start another xterm, issue the following command.

• ! xterm &
  

In Release 12, foreground functions (i.e., nonbackground functions) send their output to the diary, if the diary function has been issued. The output is also displayed in the command window (prior to Release 12, foreground function output was only displayed in the command window).

matlab_helper Process

To make the ! and unix commands operate more efficiently, in Release 12 MATLAB creates a secondary process, called matlab_helper, at startup.

This matlab_helper contains those elements of MATLAB necessary to run the ! and unix commands.

Mathematics Issues

Graphics Issue