MATLAB: “/bin/bash: R: command not found” when trying to run R from MATLAB (mac)

rsystem

I'm trying to call R from MATLAB (R2016b/R2017a prerelease) on macOS (10.12 Siera).
I've installed R and on Terminal.app, command "R" results in loanching R software successfully.
In my understanding, something like this in MATLAB command window should do the job.
> system('R CMD BATCH "script1.R"');
However, simply "system('R')" in MATLAB returns an error message as below (let alone more complicated "system('R CMD BATCH "script1.R"')"):
>> system('R')
/bin/bash: R: command not found
ans =
 127
I'm a little puzzled because the same "R" command works in Terminal and I thought "system('R')" or "unix('R')" in MATLAB is equivalent.
Can anybody suggest a solution?
For Windows, I have found a solution here. You need to properly change Environment Variables. But what about macOS?

Best Answer

In OS-X, because applications launched from the dock do not go through a login shell, the full shell initialization files are not used, so the PATH environment variable will probably not be the same.
You can either use the full path to R or you can setenv('PATH') to include the path to R, or you can alter the OS-X environment variables.
You might be able to modify /etc/paths but I am not sure that works in newer versions.
In newer versions it appears you should use launchctl -- see http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/51677/how-to-set-path-for-finder-launched-applications
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