Matlab DDE support

7 Responses

1. 
   Pooh August 1, 2010 at 03:47 Reply

   Hi,

   Thanks a lot for this feature, It works well and will save me a lot of time (changing working directory, specify the file to open).

   I’ve a question about compiled matlab application : is it possible to call DDE with a matlab compiled app (MCR) ?

   I’ve a gui that read and process files and i deploy this gui in a compiled version. The non-compiled version can now open files directly from windows explorer (thx to this post). How can i do it with the compiled version if this is possible ?

   Thx a lot

• 
  Yair Altman August 1, 2010 at 06:28 Reply

  @Pooh – I do not know how DDE behaves in a compiled application. I suspect that since MCR uses the same Matlab engine as the interactive application, DDE will also work with MCR, but I do not know. The easiest way to find out is to simply try it out (don’t worry – it will not explode in your face…)

• 
  Pooh August 2, 2010 at 22:36

  Thx,

  Since last time i’ve made a script that manage all my DDE file association (initializatiojn by writing in the registry (even file icon) and open , plot of file)

  I’m certain i’ve read somewhere that compiled scripts and gui cannot have input argument.
  So i’m not quite sure how to use DDE.
  I’ll try and post after.

  I’ll also try mulitselection.

2. 
   Pooh August 9, 2010 at 04:00 Reply

   Hi

   About compiled app:
   After compilation, there’s the *.exe
   -> myfun.exe
   I’ve associate my extension file with the executable (Step 1).
   When I open the file, myfun.exe is launched with one input arg: the path and file. It’s the same as %1 in dde.

   So, with a little adaptation, it’s easy to launch the file:

   function myfun(args) if nargin==1 && exist(args{1},'file')==2 launch_file(args{1}) return; end end

   function myfun(args) if nargin==1 && exist(args{1},'file')==2 launch_file(args{1}) return; end end

   This code is ok for guis.

   I also wanted to explore multiselect open, but it seem a little bit more tricky: a multiselect on files then open just launch n-times the single file opening instruction.

3. 
   Jonas August 8, 2011 at 04:59 Reply

   Cool stuff! About the “thing we cannot do”, i.e. passing several parameter/value pairs: From my tests with MATLAB R2010b it seems that MATLAB uses a greedy string parser here: everything between the first and last quote is treated as one string parameter. So, if your DDE command is THePlotter(‘filename.THe’, ‘somestring’, 2)
   then this is interpreted as two parameters:
   1) string: “filename.THe’, ‘somestring”
   and
   2) double: 2

   … so in principle not something you couldn’t recover from using eval().

4. 
   Martin Höcker June 17, 2013 at 10:28 Reply

   After upgrading to Matlab2013a, it took me a while to figure out that Mathworks has changed the DDE “Application Name”. It now includes the Matlab Version number, which for Matlab2013a makes it “ShellVerbs.Matlab.8.1.0.”. Just in case other people are wondering about this too, I made a small note on StackExchange.

5. Why does Windows explorer open multiple instances of Matlab2013a when I am using DDE-commands? | BlogoSfera June 17, 2013 at 11:02 Reply

   […] Windows explorer uses DDE to communicate with applications for things like file-opening, and the DDE-commands can be set in the “folder options” of Windows explorer. Matlab has an undocumented DDE-interface, which I use for telling Matlab to analyze the selected file. […]

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<pre lang="matlab">
a = magic(3);
disp(sum(a))
</pre>

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