Command Window Output to GUI

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carlos Uribe
carlos Uribe on 8 Apr 2013
Commented: Prajwol Tamrakar on 14 Apr 2021
Hello everyone,
I'm creating a GUI and at some point of it I need to run some cshells that begin printing many notifications in the command window. This all works fine, however, it would be great if all that output can be printed in the GUI itself. Is there a way of doing this? Sort of like cloning the command window into a "Static Text" field or similar in the GUI.
Any help is appreciated.

Accepted Answer

Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 8 Apr 2013
See if diary() or echo() can help you do what you want.
  2 Comments
carlos Uribe
carlos Uribe on 11 Apr 2013
This gives me an output to a file that I haven't been able to update on the GUI
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 11 Apr 2013
Then you may have to change the functions that are spewing the stuff to the command window to return the text in a string instead. If it just sort of freely spews text out asynchronously to the command window, then you may be out of luck.
Try Yair Altman's site: http://undocumentedmatlab.com/

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More Answers (3)

Yair Altman
Yair Altman on 15 Apr 2013
You can access the CW text programmatically as follows:
jDesktop = com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance;
jCmdWin = jDesktop.getClient('Command Window');
jTextArea = jCmdWin.getComponent(0).getViewport.getView;
cwText = char(jTextArea.getText);
You can place a callback that will update your GUI whenever new text is added to the CW:
set(jTextArea,'CaretUpdateCallback',@myUpdateFcn)
More details on how the CW works internally can be found in:
  9 Comments
Image Analyst
Image Analyst on 14 Mar 2020
What version are you using? Did you compile with the -m option or the -e option? If the -e option, there is no console window so that would explain it. If -m then perhaps the compiled version does not consider the console window to be the "command" window.
Yair Altman
Yair Altman on 15 Mar 2020
Edited: Yair Altman on 15 Mar 2020
Compiled applications that have a console use plain-text output, and do not send output to a Desktop window ("client") called "Command Window". Such a window is only available when you use the Matlab Desktop, and not in compiled apps (which do not display the Desktop).
The trick that I showed above uses Java code to query the text displayed in the "Command Window" client window. Compiled apps do not have such a window, so you can not query their text.
You need to programmatically redirect console output to your GUI using dedicated commands, and not rely on simple fprintf() commands.

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crawler
crawler on 21 Feb 2019
Edited: crawler on 21 Feb 2019
To use the method by @Yair Altman, you can make the intialisations (setting callbacks etc..) at the startp function of the window containing the console e.g.
function startupFcn(app)
try
jDesktop = com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance;
jCmdWin = jDesktop.getClient('Command Window');
jTextArea = jCmdWin.getComponent(0).getViewport.getView;
set(jTextArea,'CaretUpdateCallback',@app.setPromptFcn)
catch
warndlg('fatal error');
end
end
You can add a textarea at the window to display the console text.
Then you can make a private function for the event handler as such:
methods (Access = private)
function setPromptFcn(app,jTextArea,eventData,newPrompt)
% Prevent overlapping reentry due to prompt replacement
persistent inProgress
if isempty(inProgress)
inProgress = 1; %#ok unused
else
return;
end
try
% *** Prompt modification code goes here ***
cwText = char(jTextArea.getText);
app.TextArea.Value = cwText;
% force prompt-change callback to fizzle-out...
pause(0.02);
catch
% Never mind - ignore errors...
end
% Enable new callbacks now that the prompt has been modified
inProgress = [];
end % setPromptFcn
end
Writing the callback function tis way prevents entering an endless loop.
You can write whatever you like between the try statement here, to change how the callback behaves

Jack Chynoweth
Jack Chynoweth on 6 Jul 2020
I have appiled this method, and got to work in the matlab enviroment.
I have now converted it to a standalone app, and it is catching an error.
is there a way to apply the method to standalone appilcations?
  1 Comment
Yair Altman
Yair Altman on 6 Jul 2020
Edited: Yair Altman on 6 Jul 2020
As already noted above, accessing the command window text does not work in compiled applications. Read above for details

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