This bug has been fixed in Release 2006a (R2006a). For previous product releases, read below for any possible workarounds:
The message "tcsh: using dumb terminal settings." is coming from tcsh.
To fix this you can include the following in your .cshrc file:
# Currently no support for an addressable cursor in the Desktop
if ("$TERM" == "MATLAB Command Window") setenv TERM dumb
At some point you will want to relax this however, as support for an addressable cursor in the desktop becomes available, since at that time "!vi file.m" will not work if this is in place.
Unlike the bourne shell (which does not source rc files for non-interactive shells), csh and tcsh do indeed read your .cshrc file every time you start a new shell, interactive or not. That means if you write a csh script, running it will read your .cshrc. It also means that when you bang out of MATLAB, the csh we start will read your .cshrc file.
A good practice is to divide your .cshrc into two pieces: a small piece at the top which you want to happen in both interactive and non-interactive shells. Then, put this bit of code between the two:
# skip remaining setup if not an interactive shell
if ($?USER == 0 || $?prompt == 0) exit
The following items do not need to run for non-interactive shells:
- aliases (typically)
- terminal setup (tset, stty, etc)
Remember too, that if you set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH in your .cshrc, it will override the setting that MATLAB is using. (Unless you move it to below the non-interactive early exit). For example, you can compare the following:
getenv('LD_LIBRARY_PATH') % no shell is spawned
!echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH % a new shell is started
If you are still experiencing difficulties and would like to avoid tcsh altogether, you can use the following UNIX command before starting MATLAB:
setenv MATLAB_SHELL /bin/sh
