CODEWITHSUNDEEP
matlab
Flying pig
Flying pig

Reputation: 612

How to use 'system' command in MATLAB?

I have checked the documents on Mathworks about command

system

I still do not fully grasp the idea of this command. It seems that this command is designed for call external programms, such Excel, Word, R, etc.

Is there any other purposes of using this command? If I do not grasp its essential idea yet.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 8121

Answers (2)

Botond
Botond

Reputation: 111

system

is used for executing OS commands

to call Excel, Word, etc you may be better off using f.e.

actxserver()

Upvotes: 3

High Performance Mark
High Performance Mark

Reputation: 78334

In general you seem to have grasped the command in its entirety, it provides the facility to call external commands of all sorts, including operating system commands and other applications on the same (or indeed, different) computers. I suggest that you learn more about it by using it and waste no more time reading answers like this one on SO.

When you have more specific and more detailed questions, ask them.

EDIT in response to comment

Yes, you certainly can run an R program using the system command. For example, if you have a program called myRprogram.exe and if your path is set properly the Matlab command

system('myRprogram.exe')

should run your R program.

If what you mean is 'can I run an R program which I write in Matlab and send to the R run-time system at run-time' then the answer is (probably, I'm not an R expert) yes too. You should be able to write something like:

system('R set.seed(1); num=50; w = rnorm(num+1,0,1)')

So, if you can type and execute an R program from the command line, you can build and execute it inside a Matlab program.

NOTE: I am not an R programmer, and I make no claim that the string inside the call to system is a valid way to run R at the command line. If anyone reading this knows better, please feel free to edit or to write a better answer.

Upvotes: 2

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