CODEWITHSUNDEEP
matlabmatlab-gui
MCLonips
MCLonips

Reputation: 99

Run and terminate external .m-file from GUI

I created a small MATLAB-GUI to choose a directory and to start an external MATLAB-script in this directory with a click on a button. The path to the script is saved in a variable file and I start it with run(file). But now I want to stop this script by clicking on another button. Does anyone has an idea how to do this?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 250

Answers (1)

James Taylor
James Taylor

Reputation: 51

If you don't want to make any changes in the scripts that you are calling, you could try to run the script in a new Matlab instance and then kill that matlab process when you want to stop the script running. Something like:

oldPids = GetNewMatlabPIDs({}); % get a list of all the matlab.exe that are running before you start the new one
% start a new matlab to run the selected script
system('"C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2012a\bin\matlab.exe" -nodisplay -nosplash -nodesktop -minimize -r "run(''PATH AND NAME OF SCRIPT'');exit;"');
pause(0.1); % give the matlab process time to start
newPids = GetNewMatlabPIDs(oldPids); % get the PID for the new Matlab that started
if length(newPids)==1
    disp(['new pid is: ' newPids{1}])    
elseif length(newPids)==0    
    error('No new matlab started, or it finished really quickly.');
else 
    error('More than one new matlab started.  Killing will be ambigious.');
end

pause(1);
% should check here that this pid is still running and is still 
% a matlab.exe process.
system(['Taskkill /PID ' newPids{1} ' /F']);

Where GetNewMatlabPIDs gets the PIDs for Matlab.exe from the system command tasklist:

function newPids = GetNewMatlabPIDs(oldPids)
tasklist = lower(evalc('system(''tasklist'')'));
matlabIndices = strfind(tasklist, 'matlab.exe');
newPids = {};
for matlabIndex = matlabIndices
    rightIndex = strfind(tasklist(matlabIndex:matlabIndex+100), 'console');
    subString = tasklist(matlabIndex:matlabIndex+rightIndex);
    pid = subString(subString>=48 & subString<=57);
    pidCellFind = strfind(oldPids, pid);
    pidCellIndex = find(not(cellfun('isempty', pidCellFind)));
    if isempty(pidCellIndex)
       newPids{end+1} = pid; 
    end
end

Upvotes: 1

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