MATLAB: How to implement auto-save for Diary in MATLAB

autosaveMATLABtimerobj

I would like to save all the commands I enter in a given session of MATLAB. I

can place a Diary in startup.m and this works most of the time, but if MATLAB happens to crash, my diary does not save. It would be nice to have this file saved automatically periodically somehow.

Best Answer

You can use the TIMER function to generate a timer object and start this in your startup.m file. The callback that executes this will save the most current state of your diary into a file.

To name your diary file and update it every 5 seconds, the code in startup.m would be:

diaryname = ['Diary_' strrep(strrep(...
datestr(now),' ','_'),':','-') '.txt'];
diary(diaryname)
t = timer('timerfcn',@updatediary,...
'period',5,...
'ExecutionMode','fixedRate');
start(t)

The function updatediary needs to be on the MATLAB path and would contain the code:

function updatediary(obj, event, string_arg)
eval('base','diary off');
eval('base','diary on');

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MATLAB: How to stop a batch file when it is running too long in MATLAB 7.13 (R2011b)

The key point is to use SYSTEM function to use Windows command ‘start’ to run the batch file and Timer object in MATLAB to check the execution. Here is a sample code.

function bla
%%Display "hello world"
disp('hello world');
%%call to command line DOS batch file
system('start run.bat');
%%create a Timer object
%  call function 'check' after 10 seconds which is defined by 
%  'StartDelay' value
t = timer('TimerFcn',@check,'StopFcn',@terminate,'UserData',false,...
            'StartDelay',10); 
start(t);
end
%%check function will set the flag t.UserData to be true, and call
%  stop function of the Timer object 
function check(t,~) 
          t.UserData = true;
          stop(t);
          delete(t);
end
%%Stop function of the Timer object which terminates DOS batch file
function terminate(t,~)
if t.UserData
      term = system('taskkill /im cmd.exe');
      % display
      fprintf('\nprocess run.bat did not finish…\n')
else
      delete(t);
end
end

MATLAB: How to run commands in the background from MATLAB with Windows

You can run any command in the background by using a BAT-file which contains the command you would like to run. For example, if you want to start MATLAB in the background and run a command, you can create the following BAT-file:

@echo off
matlab -automation -r "surf(peaks); pause(5); quit" > matlab_output.log
exit

Then, inside MATLAB, the following command will run the script in the background:

!start "MATLAB test" /Min /B test_bat.bat

The syntax for the START command is explained in the following website:

https://ss64.com/nt/start.html

Attached is an example BAT-file: "test_bat.bat".

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: How to stop a batch file when it is running too long in MATLAB 7.13 (R2011b)

MATLAB: How to run commands in the background from MATLAB with Windows

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