engOpen (Fortran)

Start MATLAB engine session

Fortran Syntax

#include "engine.h"
mwPointer engOpen(startcmd)
character*(*) startcmd

Description

engOpen starts a MATLAB^® process for using MATLAB as a computational engine.

Windows Platforms

engOpen launches MATLAB without a desktop. The function opens a COM channel to MATLAB. The MATLAB software you registered during installation starts. If you did not register during installation, then see Register MATLAB as a COM Server.

UNIX Platforms

On UNIX^® systems, engOpen:

Creates two pipes.
Forks a new process. Sets up the pipes to pass stdin and stdout from MATLAB (parent) software to two file descriptors in the engine program (child).
Executes a command to run MATLAB software (rsh for remote execution).

Input Arguments

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`startcmd` — MATLAB startup command
`character()` | `NULL`

MATLAB startup command, specified as character*(*).

On Windows^® systems, the startcmd string must be NULL.

On UNIX systems:

If startcmd is NULL or the empty string, then engOpen starts a MATLAB process on the current host using the command matlab. If startcmd is a hostname, then engOpen starts a MATLAB process 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 any other string (has white space in it, or nonalphanumeric characters), then MATLAB executes the string literally.

Output Arguments

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`ptr` — Handle to MATLAB engine
`mwPointer` | `NULL`

Handle to MATLAB engine, specified as mwPointer. Returns NULL if the open fails.

Examples

See these examples in matlabroot/extern/examples/eng_mat:

fengdemo.F for a Fortran example.

Version History

Introduced before R2006a