From help-request at octave dot org Fri Oct 21 09:02:11 2005
Subject: Re: calling function with input arguments from commandline
From: Mike Miller <mbmiller at taxa dot epi dot umn dot edu>
To: Martina Labahn <martina_labahn at web dot de>
cc: octave-help at octave dot org, help@octave.org
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 08:54:02 -0500 (CDT)

On Fri, 21 Oct 2005, Martina Labahn wrote:

> I want to use the commandline to call the program octave + a function. 
> The "octave -- funcall FUNCTION" option doesn't work because my function 
> needs an input argument. The goal is to call this function from java. 
> Therefore the restriction to a call from the commandline. The input 
> argument is a file that should be loaded during the function.


I don't know if this will help, but did you know that you can write an 
octave script that will read command line arguments?  An Octave script is 
an executable text file with this as the first line:

#!/usr/local/bin/octave -q

The "-q" is not needed but it suppresses the initial text output (version, 
license, etc.).  Of course, if octave isn't in /usr/local, you'd have to 
change the path.

Then you can just write octave commands into the script.  I did this to 
load a file in an old version of Octave:

load(deblank(argv(1,:)))

I think the argv syntax has changed to use cell arrays in newer versions 
of Octave.  In Octave "help argv" will give you some suggestions.

Mike



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