Workaround for external program crashing

I have a Matlab script that calls an external program someProgram as follows,

eval(['!someProgram.exe ' arg1 ' ' arg2])

where arg1 and arg2 are calculated by my Matlab script, and someProgram is within a try/catch loop in my Matlab script. Occasionally someProgram crashes and hangs and I have to manually close a Windows error window until my Matlab script resumes. I would like my Matlab script to move on to the next loop iteration instead. From Matlab, is it possible to kill the process if it takes more than a certain time? I suspect the solution lies outside Matlab, but any ideas would help.

[KAE]

I tried the approach here, which is to pause for the expected length of someProgram runtime, then kill someProgram. The down side is that each loop iteration now includes a pause command which adds time if someProgram executes without hanging.

Answer 1

[Fangjun Jiang]

Can you try to use system()? It returns status that you might be able to use.