Run multiple scripts in random order

Hi Everyone,

I have three scripts for a psychophysics experiment I am running. Lets call them "arrangement1.m", "arragement2.m" and "arrangement3.m". Each script executes a task and collects participant data.

I need to counterbalance/randomise the sequence of the scripts.

I can call the scripts to run sequentially in the command window, but having them run randomly for each participant would be ideal.

Would really appreciate any suggestions!! Many thanks.

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

To run scripts you can use RUN:

C = {'arrangement1.m', 'arragement2.m', 'arrangement3.m'};
for k = randperm(numel(C))
    run(C{k})
end

Also note that the filename can include an absolute/relative path, for which FULLFILE is very useful.

[jlouise2022]

Thank you Stephen! This seems to be working! Much appreciated :)

[jlouise2022]

Just a quick follow up question...

I am getting the following error after the first script is executed:

Undefined variable C.

Error in RUN_EXPERIMENT (line 4)
run(C{k})

would appreciate any ideas!

[Stephen23]

"would appreciate any ideas! "

The script/s contain anti-pattern CLEAR (or one of its versions).

Check the scripts, get rid of CLEAR (or CLEAR ALL, CLEARVARS, etc).

[Rik]

You should also consider changing your setup by switching to functions instead of scripts. That way you can avoid most (if not all) of these issues.

[jlouise2022]

Thank you! Removing the CLEAR's did the trick. Will play around with functions too :)

[Stephen23]

Converting to functions is not that trivial: it is not possible to use RUN.

[Rik]

It is not possible to use run, but using feval is. It is also not as easy to specify a full path (best I can tell you need to cd there and back again), but I don't see a fundamental problem. Am I missing something?

[Stephen23]

Using CD has side-effects: it potentially changes other functions too. The general solution of swapping from RUN to FEVAL (or STR2FUNC etc) plus also changing the search path is not trivial... precisely because it changes the search path, which RUN does not. In some limited circumstances it could be done easily.