How can I control matlab from ubuntu terminal?

Hi everyone. I want to create a shell script which will identify a text file given from the user and then open matlab and extract data from within the text file. This is what I've done so far:

#!/bin/bash

 read -p "Type desired file for data mining :" filename
 echo "Selected file : $filename.txt"

 cd Desktop/ocean_lab_data
 vi $filename.txt

 cd ../
 cd ../
 cd ../
 cd ../
 cd usr/local/MATLAB/R2016b/bin/
 ./matlab -nosplash -nodesktop

 addpath(genpath('directory of the text file'));
 A=importdata('$filename.txt');

My problem for now is that I can't pass the commands following "./matlab -no splash -nodesktop" into matlab. Any help will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

Use the -r flag

./matlab -nosplash -nodesktop -r "addpath(genpath('directory of the text file')); A=importdata('$filename.txt');"

[Paschalis Garouniatis]

Walter thank you for your answer. When I ran the script it couldn't open the selected file. I suppose matlab can't recognize the variable "filename". What should be done?

[Walter Roberson]

You have not used a fully-qualified filename, but you cd'd to a directory where the file does not exist.

#!/bin/bash

   alias matlab="/usr/local/MATLAB/R2016b/bin/matlab"

   datadir="~/Desktop/ocean_lab_data"

   read -p "Type desired file for data mining :" filename
   ffilename="$datadir/$filename.txt"
   echo "Selected file : $ffilename"

   vi "$ffilename"

   matlab -nosplash -nodesktop -r "addpath(genpath('$datadir'));
   A=importdata('$ffilename');"

[Paschalis Garouniatis]

I ran it and ended with an error stating that matlab command not found. Does the last line need "./"? Also I had to change ~/Desktop/ocean_lab_data with the full path because it opened an empty file.

[Walter Roberson]

You would not use ./matlab on that last line.

On my system I have,

alias matlab="/Applications/MATLAB_R2017a.app/bin/matlab -nojvm -nodesktop"

after which I can just use

matlab

at the shell prompt.

In any case you can rewrite without using alias:

#!/bin/bash

   matlab="/usr/local/MATLAB/R2016b/bin/matlab"

   datadir="~/Desktop/ocean_lab_data"

   read -p "Type desired file for data mining :" filename
   ffilename="$datadir/$filename.txt"
   echo "Selected file : $ffilename"

   vi "$ffilename"

   "$matlab" -nosplash -nodesktop -r "addpath(genpath('$datadir'));
   A=importdata('$ffilename');"

except you might need to tune datadir as you indicated.

[Paschalis Garouniatis]

I modified the alias like yours on your system and it works. In the last line when you call the alias "matlab" the rest of the command line "-r ..." is not recognized and ends up with the same error as before. Is there a solution to that? I will also try it without the alias as you commented.

[Paschalis Garouniatis]

I tried it without the alias and it worked. Thanks a lot for your time Walter. If you have any suggestion for my previous comment please post it. Thnx again.

[Walter Roberson]

At the moment I cannot think of any reason why additional arguments would be ignored if alias was used.