Copy Matlab Command Window without diary

Hi everyone,

I would like to add an optional function command at the end of a script that logs the command window to a file.

I know that diary gets the job done, but diary must be activated at the beginning of the execution, and this is not always possible.

I also know that the diary command can be put in the startup.m file so that it is automatically started with the Matlab session, but also this option is not always a feasible solution (I don't have control of the computer where the code is run).

There can be also many other objections for my intention to not using diary, but let's assume that I am at least curious: is it possible to mimic the "select all"+"copy" sequence to get all the text that is available in the command window at a specific moment? the output can be stored in a variable or file, it is not important.

Thank you for your help

Fabio

[madhan ravi]

publish(...) perhaps?

[Fabio Freschi]

How can I supply the command window lines as input for publish?

Answer 1

[Mario Malic]

Hi Fabio,

I Hope that you have solved your problem already, in case if someone else might be interested in this, here's the solution.

After a bit of digging around, I managed to find a way to get the text from the command window programatically

desktop = com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance;
cmdWindow = desktop.getClient('Command Window');
cmdWindowScrollPane = cmdWindow.getComponent(0);
cmdWindowScrollPaneViewport = cmdWindowScrollPane.getComponent(0);
cmdTextUI = cmdWindowScrollPaneViewport.getComponent(0);
cmdText = cmdTextUI.getText;

[Steven Lord]

This is undocumented and so potentially subject to change without warning in future releases. It also has a problem that's common to all "after-the-fact" recordings of the text displayed in the Command Window: the buffer is finite. If your code writes a LOT of text to the Command Window, you're not going to capture it all. For example, I changed my preferences to limit the scroll buffer to 1000 and ran this code.

more off
Q = reshape(1:5500, 1100, 5) % no semicolon!

desktop = com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance;
cmdWindow = desktop.getClient('Command Window');
cmdWindowScrollPane = cmdWindow.getComponent(0);
cmdWindowScrollPaneViewport = cmdWindowScrollPane.getComponent(0);
cmdTextUI = cmdWindowScrollPaneViewport.getComponent(0);
cmdText = cmdTextUI.getText;

S = string(cmdText);
more on
S

Here's the first part of S. Note that it doesn't start with the first row, which would start with 1.

S = 

    "          76        1176        2276        3376        4476
               77        1177        2277        3377        4477
               78        1178        2278        3378        4478
               79        1179        2279        3379        4479
               80        1180        2280        3380        4480
               81        1181        2281        3381        4481

[Mario Malic]

It'll definitely change with future releases as Java will be removed.

Alright, now I can see that there's an issue with the buffer, one could easily get around it with using the method getlinecount.

cmdTextUI.getLineCount

It's possible to clear command window and append text to variable, every, let's say 500 lines (it looks like limit is around 5000 lines), including the end. I am aware that this is not really a robust solution nor a proper one, but without diary, it could be barely sufficient.

[Fabio Freschi]

Even though it may be not the cleanest way, especially for future releases, at the moment it is the only answer that solves exactly my problem. As soon as it won't work anymore, I'll contact Mario for new suggestions!

Thank you for your help

[Mario Malic]

You're welcome, I am just returning the favor.

Answer 2

[Steven Lord]

I don't think there's a way to programmatically get access to the scroll buffer of the Command Window after-the-fact. You could try "clicking" and "typing" Ctrl-A and Ctrl-C in the Command Window using java.awt.Robot then use the clipboard function to paste that into a variable, but I'm not sure how practical that would be for your application.

If you can control how MATLAB gets launched, however, you could add the -logfile startup option to that command. This wouldn't require changing any files (like startup.m.)

You could capture everything under your control except the first line by calling diary as the first line in the initial function that gets called to start your analysis.

If you don't need to see the output as the code runs and you're using it only to capture that output into a variable (you're not trying to create dynamically named variables or the like) you could use evalc. But again, that's not an after-the-fact thing; you'd have to wrap your code (say the main function call) in evalc before or as you start running it.

[Fabio Freschi]

Steve,

I tried to follow your suggestions, but the function is still not working properly, apparently in a non-deterministic way (ok, I don't believe that the behavior is random, just to say that I cannot isolate the problem). In addition the behavior is different with different OS.

I attach the function I wrote and the way I call it. Hopefully someone may have some hints

Thank you in advance

Fabio