pauseButton

Displays a button which, if clicked, causes MATLAB to pause and ask for an expression to be entered. This expression is evaluated in the calling functions workspace, the result is displayed and then MATLAB continues running its script/simulation.

pauseButton should be called often from inside a loop in a simulation which the user may want to pause. After the first call, it takes almost zero processing time.

Useful if e.g. you are running a long simulation and suddenly decide you want to know how many five card poker hands are in a pack.

Click the pause button, enter nchoosek(52,5) at the command window prompt then press return. Matlab displays
ans =
2598960
and continues the simulation.

example usage:

for ii=1:50000
pauseButton;
for jj=1:1000
dummy=randn(100)*randn(100);
end
end

Uses almost no processing time.