Calling programs (AMPL) from within Matlab on a Mac

Greetings, I just switched to a Mac, and am trying to call another program from within Matlab (in this case AMPL). I think my problem is simple: I want to call AMPL from a Matlab script. On a Windows computer I used the command

strAmplSystemCall = sprintf('ampl AC.run'); system(strAmplSystemCall);

(ampl is in the Matlab path). On the mac, I'm now getting the error

/bin/bash: ampl: command not found

I've tried it with './ampl' instead of just 'ampl' as well, and received the same error (with ./ampl not found). Anyone know the right syntax for this?

Josh

Answer 1

[Chirag Gupta]

I guess, when you run ampl, you would need certain directories to be on the PATH (environment variable) as well as some dynamic libraries (DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH another env).

Try setting the environment variables before calling the system command. You should be able to do so using export command in the bash or using setenv directly from MATLAB

[Josh]

I'm afraid I'm not sure what you mean - unfortunately I'm not well versed in Unix. What would the appropriate setenv command be?

[Walter Roberson]

oldLP = getenv('DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH');

newLP = oldLP;

if ~isempty(newLP); newLP(end+1) = ':'; end

newLP = [newLP, 'TheAdditionalPath'];

setenv('DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH',newLP);

[Josh]

Thanks - I tried this, plus the instructions for adding the directory to the PATH (http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/matlab_env/f0-12994.html#f0-38522). Unfortunately no success yet - I can use AMPL within the folder the program is in (can't move it around unfortunately due to licensing), but this is not nearly as convenient as being able to call it from anywhere.