MATLAB will search for licenses in the following order:
1) Any license files or license servers specified with the -c startup flag override all other entries on the license search path.
2) MATLAB will check against the environment variables MLM_LICENSE_FILE or LM_LICENSE_FILE. (LM_LICENSE_FILE is checked first if both are set)
3) MATLAB will check against the registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\FLEXlm License Manager\MLM_LICENSE_FILE
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\FLEXlm License Manager\LM_LICENSE_FILE
Or on Unix, it will check for /home/$USER/.flexlmrc
4) MATLAB will check the user's USERPROFILE/HOME location:
MATLAB will first search the $APPDATA\MathWorks\MATLAB\$VER_licenses folder (for Windows), and /home/$USER/.matlab/$VER_licenses (for macOS/Linux). Where:
$APPDATA is the Windows User Application Data location (obtained from navigating to %APPDATA% in explorer)
$USER is the username on the machine
$VER is the folder for the MATLAB version (ex: R2020a)
For example, this will be:
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\MathWorks\MATLAB\R2021a_licenses\
or /home/user/.matlab/R2021a_licenses/
5) Lastly, MATLAB will check in the "licenses" folder under the MATLAB installation. For example:
C:\Program Files\MATLAB\R2021a\licenses (Windows)
/Applications/MATLAB_R2021a/licenses (macOS)
/usr/local/matlab/licenses (Linux)
MATLAB will search for a license.dat first and then any .lic in alphabetical order.
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