Can I send output from shell commands (with !) to a Matlab variable?

I sometimes use shell commands from within Matlab scripts by using ! myCommand. I was recently in a situation where I needed to manipulate the output of this command in my Matlab script. Thus my question: Is there any way to send the output from a shell command to a Matlab variable?

(I realize there's a workaround in writing to a file and reading that in to Matlab, something along the lines of

! myCommand > myFile.txt
myOutput = importdata('myFile.txt')
! rm myFile.txt

but I was wondering if there was a more elegant way.)

[Matt J]

I guess Jan answered your question, but it might be worthwhile if you elaborated on why this is necessary in your particular case. In many cases, MATLAB has its own commands that substitute for shell commands, so maybe what you're trying to do through the shell is unnecessary. For example, you shouldn't really have to do things like

 ! rm myFile.txt

when MATLAB already has its own command for file deletion

 delete myFile.txt

Same goes for file/directory copying, moving, listing, etc...

[Walter Roberson]

movefile() on Linux systems uses "mv" flag ('-p') that is not valid for NFS filesystems.

Someone (Jan?) demonstrated that some of the file-oriented commands are much slower than using the OS commands.

[Alec Nagel]

Thanks for that info, Walter!

@Matt: The question was partly out of general curiosity, but it was prompted by needing to retrieve the current directory name without the path.

[~,dirName]=system('basename $(pwd)')

works nicely, but I guess I could accomplish the same by

foo = regexp(pwd,'/','split'); 
dirName = foo{end}

Not quite sure which one I prefer in this case, but I'm sure there are other cases in which system() will prove useful.

Answer 1

[Jan]

What about using system() instead?

[Alec Nagel]

Good idea :)