Save/Restore Variable Editor State

Since the sysadmins frequently force me to end my Matlab sessions at the end of the workday, I'd like to be able to restore a session as seamlessly as possible. I know how to do this for breakpoints, but does anyone know how to capture the set of variables open in the VE as well as their pane assignments and pane sizes? And conversely, how to restore the appearance of those panes at next startup?

If I can capture the list of variable names, I can simply loop over them in start.m with and call openvar for each, but that won't restore the panes.

[per isakson]

I don't recognize the acronym "VE". Is that the name of a development environment?

[Jan]

*V*ariable *E*ditor

Answer 1

[Daniel Shub]

Why not just suspend/hibernate your machine? You could also run MATLAB in a virtual machine and then suspend that machine.

Answer 2

[per isakson]

I don't recognize the acronym "VE"

Use SAVE and LOAD to handle the variables in the base workspace.

    list = who;

creates a list of the names of the variables. You have to save list somewhere.

[Desktop] in the menu bar and the [Save Layout] will save the ....

Answer 3

[Jim]

VE = Variable Editor

Daniel, the sysadmins insist that all users log off so that patches can be pushed. There are frequently restarts required as well, so suspend/hibernate isn't an option, unfortunately.

Per, who creates a list of all variables open in the workspace. I'm only interested in those that are open in the VE at close of session. Moreover, I'd like more than just the list. To really restore everything I also need which pane each variable is assigned to and maybe the pane locations and sizes.

I think I might be getting somewhere on this. Based on this post: http://blogs.mathworks.com/desktop/2008/04/21/variable-editor/, I tried

jDesktop = com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance;

which returns a handle to the Matlab desktop (which is a Java object).

jDesktop.getClientTitles()

then returns a cell array of strings listing all Desktop components/panes/(whatever the correct term is) that are currently open:

'Command Window'
'Command History'
'Current Folder'
...
'C:\Users\...\<matlab_src_file_1>'
'C:\Users\...\<matlab_src_file_2>'
...
'var1'
'var2'
...

The first set of names are built-in Matlab components, the 2nd set are the source files currently open in the Editor, and the last set are the variables open in the VE. The source files are listed in tab order from left to right, and the variables are similarly listed in pane order. If I save the last set, I should be able to restore them at next session start by simply looping over the list with calls to openvar() on each. (Hopefully they'll appear in the same panes.) This is pretty cool stuff.

[Daniel Shub]

You really should make these into comments on the appropriate answers and add what you have found to the original question as an edit.

I still say go with MATLAB in a virtual machine. Also tell your sysadmins that you are running simulations that need to run overnight and that they can ...