From octave-sources-request at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu  Sun Jun 16 11:45:29 2002
Subject: start octave with initial command
From: Paul Kienzle <pkienzle at jazz dot ncnr dot nist dot gov>
To: octave-sources at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 21:46:36 -0400


I thought this would be an easy problem: start octave with an initial
command and continue with the octave prompt.  E.g., 

	$ ioctave load test.mat
	octave> 

Here is the solution I came up with.  I welcome better ones.

A better example would be an audio analysis environment which you start
with the name of the audio file and it displays the spectrogram for you
automatically before the first octave prompt.  So instead of $* below you
would have:

	[x,fs]=auload("$1"); spectrogram(x,fs);

Paul Kienzle
pkienzle at users dot sf dot net

ioctave:

#! /bin/sh

# Start octave with an initial command.

# This program is public domain.

# Check if the user has a special OCTAVE_INITFILE, or use default .octaverc
[ -z "$OCTAVE_INITFILE" ] && OCTAVE_INITFILE=.octaverc

# Check if OCTAVE_INITFILE exists. Note that octave first
# processes ~/.octaverc then if it is different, ./.octaverc
STARTUP=""
[ -r $HOME/$OCTAVE_INITFILE ] && STARTUP="source('$HOME/$OCTAVE_INITFILE');"
[ -r ./$OCTAVE_INITFILE -a ! ./$OCTAVE_INITFILE -ef $HOME/$OCTAVE_INITFILE ] \
    && STARTUP="$STARTUP source('./$OCTAVE_INITFILE');"

# Build a script which sources OCTAVE_INITFILE then does our initial command
SCRIPT=`mktemp $HOME/octXXXXXX` || exit 1
cat > $SCRIPT <<EOF
   $STARTUP
   $*
EOF

# Start octave using our script
OCTAVE_INITFILE=${SCRIPT:${#HOME}:10}
export OCTAVE_INITFILE
octave --silent

# Remove our init script
rm -f $SCRIPT