External Interfaces/API Reference

engOpen

Start a MATLAB engine session

Fortran Syntax

• 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 to use 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:

1. Creates two pipes.
2. Forks a new process and sets up the pipes to pass stdin and stdout from the child to two file descriptors in the parent.
3. 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.

engGetVariable

engOutputBuffer