Why does Matlab set a custom LD_LIBRARY_PATH when execting "system" on Linux?

Why does Matlab set the LD_LIBRARA_PATH environment variable of the shell in which it executes "system" commands on Linux?

I can understand setting this for matlab's own use, but for commands executed on the system, surely you want them to be executed using the system libraries. I only discovered this because I was finding my commands failing with cryptic errors referencing paths in the Matlab installation directory.

Is there any way to control the behviour?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

MATLAB uses system() to invoke its own utilities such as mex(), so it needs to have the right LD_LIBRARY_PATH set up for those, and those utilities need to be accessible to scripts that the user invokes.

Answer 2

[Rob Campbell]

Does this help? http://uk.mathworks.com/help/matlab/matlab_external/building-and-running-engine-applications-on-unix-operating-systems.html

[Richard Crozier]

Thanks, but no, this is unrelated to my question.