Is there a way to make an existing cmd window execute commands? - windows

Question

So here is my situtation.
I am using the Windows OS. I am running a Matlab GUI that launches another executable at startup. The other executable runs in batch mode (runs in cmd in the background).
I want to make it so when a user clicks a button on the Matlab GUI, the other executable will run a command and remain open. Is this possible?
NOTE: I do not want to open a new cmd window, I want the existing one to execute commands.

Answer 1

Unfortunately it does not appear that Matlab has the ability you are looking for, at least not directly. I found a post which does explain how to do it with the help of .NET though, which is fortunate since you are on the Windows platform: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/72356-using-matlab-to-send-strings-to-the-stdin-of-another-console-application
I have copied a lot of this from that post
function lh = task()
% Initialize the process and its StartInfo properties.
% The sort command is a console application that
% reads and sorts text input.
process = System.Diagnostics.Process;
process.StartInfo.FileName = 'sort.exe';
process.EnableRaisingEvents = true;
process.StartInfo.CreateNoWindow = true;
% Set UseShellExecute to false for redirection.
process.StartInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
%Redirect the standard output of the sort command.
process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;
% Set our event handler to asynchronously read the sort output.
lh = process.addlistener('OutputDataReceived',#sortOutputHandler);
% Redirect standard input as well. This stream
% is used synchronously.
process.StartInfo.RedirectStandardInput =true;
% Start the process.
process.Start();
%Use a stream writer to synchronously write the sort input.
ProcessStreamWriter = process.StandardInput;
% Start the asynchronous read of the sort output stream.
process.BeginOutputReadLine();
%Prompt the user for 4 input text lines. Write each
%line to the redirected input stream of the sort command.
numInputLines = 0;
while(numInputLines ~= 4)
inputText = input('Enter a text line (or press the Enter key to stop):', 's');
numInputLines = numInputLines + 1;
if(~isempty(inputText))
ProcessStreamWriter.WriteLine(inputText);
end
end
disp('end of input stream');
%end the inputr stream to the sort command
ProcessStreamWriter.Close();
% wait for the sort process to write the sorted text lines
process.WaitForExit();
process.Close();
end
For handling any output from the CMD you need:
function processOutputHandler(obj,event)
%collect the sort command output and print in command window
if(~isempty(event.Data))
disp(event.Data);
end
end
You can use a stream writer to synchronously write the sort input.
processStreamWriter = process.StandardInput;
Again, I have taken this from the previously mentioned post so I can't take any credit for the code, but I do think it will be able to accomplish what you are looking for. Unfortunately, I am pretty sure this will accomplish what you need. I don't have Matlab on a Windows platform at the moment or I would test this. If you need information on using .NET code in MATLAB (its not immediately clear if you need to add some stuff to establish the .NET interface) MathWorks provides some documentation on it: http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/using-net-from-matlab-an-overview.html
Hopefully this helps, or gets you started. Let me know if there's anything else I missed.

Answer 2

You can approach this from the ansys side. Start it with -B-R to read a python script.
From there, you can establish some two-way protocol, for example polling files or, better, by running a web server from python.
Then you can communicate from matlab with that running instance of ansys. If you opt for a web server, you use MATLABs urlread().
Setting up a web-server with python is easy, but you have to learn how to dispatch commands to the hosting ansys application.