MATLAB: How to programatically print out the contents of the MATLAB Command Window

commanddiarylogMATLABprintwindow

The contents of MATLAB's Command Window can be printed out by using 'Ctrl + P' or right-clicking and selecting "Print…" from the Command Window itself. How can I do the same programmatically, such as from within scripts?

Best Answer

This functionality can be emulated by using the "diary" and "system" commands. First, use "diary" to enable Command Window logging and save it in a file:

>> diary('commandLog')
>> diary on

This creates a file named 'commandLog' in MATLAB's current folder. Now, execute the commands of interest. Be sure to not suppress the output of variables with semicolons if you would like them to be written to the file. Once you are ready to print the file, execute the following commands to turn off diary logging, print the text file through Notepad, and then delete the file:

>> diary off
>> system('notepad /p commandLog')
>> delete('commandLog')

It is recommended that the file be deleted every time this workaround is used since "diary" appends Command Window text to the file if it already exists.

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Renaming files using MATLAB

From MATLAB, you can use the "movefile" function to rename files on your machine:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/ref/movefile.html

For more information on managing files and folders in MATLAB see this documentation:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/releases/R2020a/matlab/matlab_env/manage-files-and-folders.html

Alternatively, you can use the "system" command which executes on the local operating system.

On Windows using CMD, the "rename" command works like this:

C:> rename  file_path  new_name
C:> rename  C:\Temp\file1.txt file2.txt

So in MATLAB, from the directory with the file you could execute:

>> system("rename " + "old_name.txt" + " " + "new_name.txt")

If the file names contain spaces, this can confuse the operating system, so a more robust approach is to wrap each file name in double quotes like this:

>> system("rename " + '"' + "old name.txt" + '" "' + "new name.txt" + '"')

This produces a system command like this:

C:> rename "old name.txt" "new name.txt"

To use MATLAB variables for the old and new file names you can use these MATLAB commands:

>> old_path_to_file = "C:\Temp\test a.txt";

>> new_filename = "test b.txt";

>> cmd = "rename " + '"' + old_path_to_file + '" "' + new_filename + '"';

>> system(cmd);

On a Linux or macOS (Unix) system, this would be:

>> old_path_to_file = "/tmp/test a.txt";
>> new_filename = "test b.txt";
>> cmd = "mv " + '"' + old_path_to_file + '" "' + new_filename + '"';
>> system(cmd);

MATLAB: How to use custom date labels for the x-axis in MATLAB plots

It is more convenient to format the tick labels using the "XTick", "XTickLabelMode" and "XTickLabel" properties of the axis object (vs. using "datetick" function):

>> figure
>> box on
>>
>> % Start, end and number of ticks...
>> startDate = 7.3457e+05;
>> endDate = 7.3458e+05;
>> numbertick = ceil(endDate - startDate);
>>
>> % Plot them
>> xData = linspace(startDate, endDate, numbertick);
>> plot(xData,ones(size(xData)));
>>
>> %%Modify the axes properties
>> set(gca, 'XTick',xData)
>> set(gca, 'TickDir', 'out');
>> set(gca, 'XTickLabelMode', 'auto');
>>
>> % Modifying the labels
>> labels = get(gca, 'XTickLabel');
>>
>> for i = 1:length(labels)
>>     if i == 1 || i == ceil(length(labels)/2) || i == length(labels)
>>         labels{i} = datestr(xData(i), 'mm/dd');
>>     else
>>         labels{i} = '';
>>     end
>> end
>>
>> set(gca, 'XTickLabel', labels)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MATLAB: Renaming files using MATLAB

MATLAB: How to use custom date labels for the x-axis in MATLAB plots

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