compileAndRun

Easily compile and run a matlab function for significant speed improvements.

Description

Newer version of Matlab let you compile Matlab code using emlmex, significantly improving the speed of certain functions, particularly those involving loops. However, the size and type of the inputs have to be fixed at compile time, limiting its use.

This function lets you compile functions dynamically at run time so that the size and types of the inputs don't have to be known before hand.

You simply call this function like you would feval:

[a,b,c] = runAndCompile('myfunc',X,Y,Z)

Note, however, that Matlab's emlmex only supports a subset of the Matlab language. This will not work with all functions and it might take some work to make functions eml compliant. See Matlab's emlmex help for details. A few minutes work, however, can save you hours or days of computer time depending on the size of the problem.

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.6 (R2008a)
• Other requirements: Requires emlmex - not sure if this is distributed with a vanilla Matlab install.

[Arturo Serrano]

 

[Arturo Serrano]

Thanks for the code. Very useful.

I like to use constant inputs, but these must be dropped when executing the mex file. I think that this can make the trick:

varargin(cellfun (@(x)isa(x, 'emlcoder.Example') && strcmp(x.Type, 'CONST'), varargin)) = [];

This gives an error when an old mex version exists. The catch block can be completed with

if exist(fname) == 3
    warning('compileAndRun:oldMex', '\n\nusing an old compiled version\n\n');
    varargin(cellfun... );
end

(I prefer to throw an error rather than a warning. I've not tested the catch block)

Cheers.