External Interfaces/API

Attaching to an Existing MATLAB Session

You can make a MATLAB engine program attach to a MATLAB session that is already running by starting the MATLAB session with /Automation in the command line. When you make a call to engOpen, it will then connect to this existing session. You should only call engOpen once, as any engOpen calls will now connect to this one MATLAB session.

The /Automation option also causes the command window to be minimized. You must open it manually.

Note    For more information on the /Automation command line argument, see Additional Automation Server Information. For information about the Component Object Model interfaces used by MATLAB, see Introducing MATLAB COM Integration.

For example:

1. Shut down any MATLAB sessions.
2. From the Start button on the Windows menu bar, click Run.
3. In the Open field, type

• d:\matlab\bin\win32\matlab.exe /Automation
  

1. where d:\matlab\bin\win32 represents the path to the MATLAB executable.

4. Click OK. This starts MATLAB.
5. In MATLAB, change directories to $MATLAB/extern/examples/eng_mat, where $MATLAB is the MATLAB root directory.
6. Compile the engwindemo.c example.
7. Run the engwindemo program by typing at the MATLAB prompt

• !engwindemo
  

1. This does not start another MATLAB session, but rather uses the MATLAB session that is already open.

Note    On the UNIX platform, you cannot make a MATLAB engine program use a MATLAB session that is already running.

Calling MATLAB From a Fortran Application

Compiling and Linking Engine Programs