how to stop a loop at any time during the loop using ui?

I have a while loop that takes a while to run each iteration, about 60 seconds, and I want to be able to stop the loop at any time witout using CTRL+C.

at the moment I'm using:

               ButtonHandle = uicontrol('Style', 'PushButton', ...
                            'String', 'Stop loop', ...
                            'Callback', 'delete(gcbf)');
                while (ishandle(ButtonHandle))
                        (run certain processes)
                        pause(1)
                end

While clicking the stop loop button, the loop still doesn't break.

Any idea on how can I use the stop loop button to break the loop?

Answer 1

[Thiago Henrique Gomes Lobato]

A possible solution can be done like this:

function gui

fig = figure;
ButtonHandle = uicontrol('Style', 'PushButton', ...
    'String', 'Stop loop', ...
    'Callback',@StopLoopCallback);
StopLoop = 0;
while true
    fprintf('a \n')    
    pause(1)
    
    if StopLoop
        break
    end
    
end

    function StopLoopCallback(ob,e)

        StopLoop = 1;        
    end

end

Important is that you constantly ask if the StopLoop was checked, and not only at the end of the while loop, since the function will only be able to stop when the condition is asked. If you have a single function call that takes, for example, 20 s you will not be able to stop it until is over without using ctrl+c option (you could also do it programmatically also but the whole execution will stop in the same way) .

[Orel Levy]

still doesn't seem to work, what does the "ob,e" means in the function callback?

also, is it neccessery to add the main function gui, or can i run it inside a script?

[Stephen23]

"what does the "ob,e" means in the function callback?"

All GUI callback functions are called by default with at least two input arguments, which are the source object and an event array (which may be empty). In the above code neither of them are used within the callback function, so they can be replaced with ~.

Read more:

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/creating_guis/write-callbacks-using-the-programmatic-workflow.html