Spawning Matlab processes from within Matlab

--How do I make Matlab call lots of little Matlabs?--

Here is a simple script that takes one parameter as input.

% simple.m  
disp(['you passed in',num2str(x)])
disp(['its cube is',num2str(x^3)])

I can run this from the command line

mymachine$ /Applications/MATLAB_R2010b.app/bin/matlab -nodisplay -nosplash -r "x=5;simple;exit"

What I would like is a way to call this script several times from within MATLAB thereby spawning independent MATLAB processes.

I had hoped it would be as simple as this:

% Control script
% Loop over an input variable and create several MATLABs
for param = 1:5
  funcstr = '/Applications/MATLAB_R2010.app/bin/matlab -nodisplay -nosplash -r ';
  scrstr = ['"x=',num2str(param),';simple;exit"'];
  command = [funcstr, scrstr];
  system(command);
end

But this seems to complete the commands sequentially rather than allowing them to run independently.

I would also rather avoid doing the control loop in a shell script if I can avoid it. Doing the loop in Matlab seems to afford me much more flexibility.

Any advice on how to do this very simple thing without the toolbox?

Cheers, John

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

You need to have your command string "command" end with ampersand (&)

For example,

system('date &');