When using the ! or SYSTEM command, MATLAB forks off a non-interactive, non-login shell. Hence, depending on the shell being used only specific configuration files will be sourced.
The TCSH shell is more easily configurable for this task. To ensure that your aliases are recognized
1. Create a ~/.cshrc file with the aliases.
2. Create an environment variable MATLAB_SHELL=/bin/tcsh. When using the UNIX or ! commands, MATLAB queries this environment variable to check if a particular shell choice has been made.
Configuring a BASH shell for this task is more complicated because the non-interactive Bash shell does not read the ~/.bashrc file. Instead it queries the BASH_ENV environment variable for a file that must be executed at shell creation. Additionally, Bash does not expand (read substitute) aliases in non-interactive shells and hence one has to explicitly specify that it does this, to get this to work with a Bash shell
1. Set the variables, BASH_ENV=~/someFile and MATLAB_SHELL=/bin/bash.
2. Create a file ~/someFile that sets the appropriate aliases and include the following additional line
shopt -s expand_aliases
Note that on a Mac, setting global environment variables like MATLAB_SHELL and BASH_ENV requires one to edit a PLIST-file. Instructions on how to do this are available here:
