Use system to run a program in Matlab

I have a program named "C:\ecl\macros\$e300" which requires a parameter file named "C:\ecl\macros\data1" (without any extension). $e300 is already available in environmental variables of Windows and can be directly run by $e300.

matlab can call and run this program as system('$e300 Parameter').

However this doesn't work:

 name='data';
 nameData2=strcat(name,num2str(1)); 
 yourCommand=strcat('$e300',{blanks(1)},nameData2);
 system(yourCommand);

The error is : Error using system Argument must contain a string.

Answer 1

[James Tursa]

You have inadvertantly used curly braces in the formation of your string, which has turned the entire result into a cell array. Try this instead:

yourCommand=strcat('$e300',blanks(1),nameData2);

[H-H]

No this didn't work- the space is not added to the string. it just creates $e300data1 and an error happens

[James Tursa]

Right. strcat is trimming the blanks. So ditch strcat:

yourCommand=['$e300 ',nameData2];

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

Why can't you just do

system('$e300 C:\ecl\macros\data1');

??? If there are any variables in your command string, then use sprintf(), for example:

myNumber = 1;  % Your variable that changes all the time.
commandLine = sprintf('$e300 C:\\ecl\\macros\\data%d', myNumber);
system(commandLine);