External Interfaces/API

Compiling and Linking on UNIX

Under UNIX at runtime, you must tell the system where the API shared libraries reside. These sections provide the necessary UNIX commands depending on your shell and system architecture.

Setting Runtime Library Path

In C shell, the command to set the library path is

• setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH <matlab>/extern/lib/$Arch:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  

In Bourne shell, the commands to set the library path are

• LD_LIBRARY_PATH=<matlab>/extern/lib/$Arch:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  export LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  

where <matlab> is the MATLAB root directory and $Arch is your system architecture (alpha, glnx86, sgi, sol2, hp700, or ibm_rs).

Note that the environment variable (LD_LIBRARY_PATH in this example) varies on several platforms. The following table lists the different environment variable names you should use on these systems.

Table 6-5: Environment Variable Names

Architecture	Environment Variable
HP700	SHLIB_PATH
IBM RS/6000	LIBPATH

It is convenient to place these commands in a startup script such as ~/.cshrc for C shell or ~/.profile for Bourne shell.

Using the Options File

MATLAB provides an options file, matopts.sh, that lets you use the mex script to easily compile and link MAT-file applications. For example, to compile and link the matcreat.c example, you can use

• mex -f <matlab>/bin/matopts.sh <pathname>/matcreat.c
  

where <pathname> specifies the complete path to the specified file.

If you need to modify the options file for your particular compiler or platform, use the -v switch to view the current compiler and linker settings and then make the appropriate changes in a local copy of the matopts.sh file.

Compiling and Linking MAT-File Programs

Compiling and Linking on Windows