cmd

cmd - Execute a command on the host operating system

This function is very similar to Matlab's builtin SYSTEM function
with the exception that it provides a way for the user to specify a
timeout time (in seconds) after which the function will error out.

For example, the following ping to an unavailable IP address could
take several minutes to complete but we can cause it to timeout if
there is no response within 5 seconds

status = cmd('ping -n 1 255.0.0.0', 5);

Obviously, many OS commands (such as ping) have a timeout parameter
but this function allows the user to not worry about these
command-specific parameters and have a consistent way of specifying
a timeout value for external commands.

USAGE:
[status, stdout, stderr] = cmd(command, *timeout)

INPUTS:
command: String, Command to be evaluated by the host OS

timeout: Integer, (Optional) Number of seconds to wait for the
process to complete. A value of either 0 or Inf
indicates that there is no timeout (Default = 0)

OUTPUTS;
status: Integer, Exit code returned by the process. Typically a
value of 0 indicates that the process completed without
error while a non-zero value indicates some sort of
error.

stdout: String, Output from the process that was printed to
standard output.

stderr: String, Output from the process that was printed to
standard error buffer. Can be used in case of a
non-zero return code to determine what type of error
occurred.

See also SYSTEM, UNIX, DOS