Edit .m files in Emacs

A major mode for editing .m files under GNU-emacs

Description

Documentation on downloading a major mode for editing .m files under GNU-Emacs.

This project is managed on SourceForge.

http://matlab-emacs.sourceforge.net/

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 5.2 (R10)
• Other requirements: Emacs or XEmacs

[Jody Klymak]

Excellent mode - works well in Gnu/X Emacs. Prompt support via mailing list.

[Shai Ayal]

 

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

.....but I still have to come up with the
algorithms....

[Pete Watkins]

Awesome: The emacs mode is a very convenient way to use matlab

[Kaoru Amano]

 

[Wolfgang Brandhuber]

Thanks for that emacs-mode.
It really helps a lot.

[Edward Grace]

Far better than the Matlab editor!

[Satya Mishra]

Matlab-mode brings the power of emacs and the power of matlab-engine together to build a great software. Matlab's own GUI is a pale attempt at making something useful.

[Stephan Weiss]

Many thanks - this is really great help!

[Damiano Cozza]

Only can say: "...thanks!"

[Josiah Yoder]

Thanks... for those addicted to the many tools in emacs like me, this is great! It was easy to get working, too!

[Jerry Chen]

good work....with a little typo in the comment:
it should be :
(setq matlab-shell-command-switches '("-nojvm"))
instead of
(setq matlab-shell-command-swithes '("-nojvm"))

[Masahiko Mizuno]

It is good for me to program on UNIX.

[Dave Lin]

Thanks so much for making this available. I've always found MATLAB's built-in editor somewhat annoying, and you've liberated us from that.

[Hirak Parikh]

Make sure that you put the .el file in the
 /lisp folder wherever EMACS is stored or atleast add the path in the .emacs file

[Stephen L.]

First off, thanks for making this available. One fix that I think is needed: When you insert a function from the menu, the name of the function (in caps), should be right next to the percent sign. There should not be a space.

Other then that, thank you for making this available.

[Steve Badelt]

For more "modern" implementations of matlab, with the Java interface, you may want to modify the following in the .el file:

(defcustom matlab-shell-command-switches ""

to

(defcustom matlab-shell-command-switches "-nodesktop"

the same can be directly edited in the .elc file if you have it.

[Max Lin]

 

[Ben J]

Very nice!

[Zhiheng Cao]

Emacs gives me an error when I try byte-compile-file:

Compiling file /home/polaris/cao/matlab/matlab.el at Mon Jan 3 17:45:47 2005
  ** reference to free variable matlab-eei-process
While compiling matlab-mode:
  ** assignment to free variable add-log-current-defun-function
While compiling toplevel forms:
  !! Invalid read syntax ((")"))

[Matyas Sustik]

Indentation does not work after a comment line.
The default indentation is 2 while in the GUI it is 4. Otherwise it is of great help! Thank you very much!

[Yossi Farjoun]

Better than the Matlab editor IMHO.

One (tiny) bug I found: if you have a variable named 'end_something' and you have a block like so:

if a>b
   end_something =0;
end

the indentation doesn't work properly.

Cheers.

[Matthias Habl]

When having two or more consecutive comment lines, pressing <enter> causes Emacs to hang. Fortunately C-g can break this infinite loop.

[Yeah Right]

 

[Ted Catchpole]

 

[Tom Toth]

Hangs after multiple comment lines if they're at the beginning of the .m file.
I like the many configuration options.

[Jani Lahtinen]

The matlab-shell fails to work with 7.1.0.7 (R14) Service Pack 3 and GNU Emacs 21.3.1. When starting with M-x matlab-shell the result is "M-Shell hangup"! The variable in the line 82 from matlab-shell-command-swithes should be matlab-shell-command-switches -Add the notable 'c'!

[Dai Stevei]

There are bugs in matlab.el version higher than 2.3.1, because it can't not work correctly in windows xp, but works correctly in linux

the problem is:when lauch matlab-shell(the matlab-shell works correctly on cmd.ext),there are infinitly "<<",then the matlabshell cann't stop,always display "<<", so the whole screen is "<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<...",and the buffer size is grow larger and larger, I don't kown why, but the matlab.el verson 2.2.3 works correctly

[Dai Stevei]

Maybe I have the problem
I went through the source code of matlab.el version 2.3.1 with 2.2.3, and found the difference between two:
>in matlab.el v2.2.3 line 3659, the code is : comint-prompt-regexp "^K?>> *"
>but in v2.3.1 or higher ,the code is :comint-prompt-regexp "^\\(K\\|EDU\\)?>> *"
>I guess it maybe the problem, so I revised the source code of the version 2.3.1,and it works! then I tried the version 2.3.2 and version 3.0.1, It works in v2.3.2,but failed in 3.0.1.

[Alexey Koloydenko]

Versions 2.3.1 and 3.0.1:
For some reason, I can only get the shell to work if I create an executable file containing the appropriate command (e.g. on my machine: /usr/local/bin/matlab -nodesktop -nojvm) and refer the matlab-shell-command variable to that file. Going directly fails with either '' M-Shell hangup'' (with the default matlab-shell-command variable provided by matlab.el) or with ''Can't exec program: /usr/local/bin/matlab -nodesktop -nojvm'' with '(matlab-shell-command "/usr/local/bin/matlab -nodesktop -nojvm"). Otherwise, I have been happily using this resource for several years.

[Bjørn-Helge Mevik]

I have the same problem as reported by Alexey Koloydenko. The script that starts matlab (for me: /opt/matlab/bin/matlab), uses exec when starting the binary, and Emacs' start-process (which is used by comint, which is used by matlab-shell) doesn't seem to like that. Creating a script that runs
/opt/matlab/bin/matlab "$@"
works perfectly, while
exec /opt/matlab/bin/matlab "$@"
gives the "hangup"-message. (The "$@" is just so matlab-shell can pass arguments (e.g. -nodesktop) to the program.)

(I have no idea whether this is a problem with Emacs' start-process or the Matlab binary.)

[John Murphy]

I have been using this for some time now and think that it is great. It is too bad that the native matlab editor cannot do a better job with its emacs emulation, as switching between the two for debug can be tiresome. Thank you for making this available.

[Ike Stoddard]

I love it, and am grateful. In the spirit of cooperative improvement, I submit:
Bug Report, v2.3.1 in Unix (OSF1 V5.1 2650 alpha; XEmacs 21.1; May 1999) or Linux(GNU Emacs 21.3.1 (i386-redhat-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2003-05-22 on porky.devel.redhat.com):
Strings of '%' (e.g., used as boxes or separators) cause CPU looping. ^G terminates. Need to avoid the looping in the first place.
Also: fails to indent properly after comment lines as previously reported.

[Chethan P]

i do love this mode and use it every day. it would be wonderful to see support for object oriented programming in the indentation blocks (class, methods, properties, having functions indented inside a class definition, etc). right now as far as i can tell declaring a function resets the overall indentation, so a function inside a class kind of screws everything up.

thanks for this, it's great.

[x y]

 

[huy pham]

I need help with this. When i try to launch matlab from emacs, it would not work. I think the load-path was not set up properly. Where can I go to edit it?

[Scott Otterson]

This mode is very good, but I'm afraid it's falling behind the evolution of the Matlab language.

I'm a rabid emacs user so I still use matlab.el, but I'm also experimenting with the emacs keybindings in the Matlab desktop. On the desktop, code highlighting and indenting work correctly, and there's an up-to-date debugger interface. On the other hand, many emacs key combinations are missing -- for just cranking out code, emacs/matlab.el is faster, at least for me.

I haven't yet decided which environment is more productive overall.

[mark p]

I got the debugger working somewhat by loading the matlab-shell and calling "dbstop". Emacs shows an arrow at the line of code I'm currently stopped at. I was wondering:
1) Can emacs display where my breakpoints are?
2) Is it possible to set/remove breakpoints from emacs instead of having to type dbstop/dbclear?
3) Is there anyway to step code with a single key in emacs? (like f-10) rather than having to type 'dbstep' every time in the matlab portion of the window?

thanks
-mark

[Rob Campbell]

Good stuff!! I couldn't manage without this because I'm so much faster in emacs. However, I must agree with those who say that this is currently lacking features compared to the Mathworks editor.

[Ernst Kloppenburg]

 

[coyboy]

Can anyone help me? Please send me a copy of file "matlab.el". There is some unknown problem for me to download from sourceforge net. I currently use old version. I want to try new.
[e-mail]
Thank you!

[David]