Run within Matlab a written C# .exe program to obtain an output variable

Hi Matlab community,

I would like to be able to run an .exe code (created in C#) and then get the output into a Matlab variable. This would allow to fasten some tedious calculations.

See below the C# code that I've written used for testing. It is just a function that return a the input number after squaring it. I obtain the TestMatlab.exe file (See the file attached).

using System;

namespace TestMatlab
{
    class Program
    {
        static int f(int x)
        {
            int returnvalue = x * x;
            return returnvalue;
        }

          static void Main(string[] args)
          {
              f(Convert.ToInt32(args[0]));
              Console.WriteLine(f(3));
          }
      }
  }

And this is how I run the .exe in Matlab afterwards :

    % Just define some of the space and bracket needed otherwise it get visually hard to understand
    bracket = '"'; space=' ';

    % Run the code - input number is 3 so expect 9 as an output
    % can use "system" or "dos"
    system(['C\Users\MatlabCode\' 'TestMatlab.exe', space ,bracket, num2str(3),bracket]);

Output is the following:

   >> Results = system(['C\Users\MatlabCode\' 'TestMatlab.exe', space ,bracket, num2str(3),bracket]);
    9 
  >> Results

Results =

       0

The results "9" is just written there and it is not assigned to any variable. Is there a workaround this?

Answer 1

[Kojiro Saito]

By assigning two output variables, results of Console.WriteLine can be passed to the variable. In the following example, 9 will be caught in cmdout variable as a character.

[status, cmdout] = system(['CsharpFromMatlab.exe', space ,bracket, num2str(3),bracket]);
% In this case, cmdout will be '9\n'
% Eleminate a line change character and convert characters to double 
Results = str2double(sscanf(cmdout, '%s\n'));

[vincent caillet]

Good stuff thanks! Is there an actual way of exporting a variable directly into Matlab? I'm ok with C#, I can easily modify most of my codes.

[Kojiro Saito]

One way is create .NET dll and call it from MATLAB. Ref: this document (Call .NET Methods with Optional Arguments)

Create TestClass.dll from the following C# code.

TestClass.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace dotNetTestClass
{
  public class TestClass
  {
      // Add
      public double TestAdd(double a, double b)
      {
          return a + b;
      }
  }
}

Then, call this dll from MATLAB

% Make dll visible to MATLAB
asm = NET.addAssembly('C:\hoge\dotNetTestClass.dll');

% Make the dll available
cls = dotNetTestClass.TestClass;

a = 3.14;
b = 100;
% Call the dll function
addcalc = TestAdd(cls, a, b);

We can get C# dll result and assign it to MATLAB variable (addcalc, in this case).

[vincent caillet]

That's absolutely perfect, thanks for that! I found so many threads online with people desperate to make this work. This is going to be so helpful.

Answer 2

[tasneem]

% Define region of interest

latlims = [39.5 40];

lonlims = [-105.6 -105.1];

% Define grid of target locations in region of interest

tgtlatv = linspace(latlims(1),latlims(2),50);

tgtlonv = linspace(lonlims(1),lonlims(2),50);

[tgtlons,tgtlats] = meshgrid(tgtlonv,tgtlatv);

tgtlons = tgtlons(:);

tgtlats = tgtlats(:);

Z = elevation(txsite("Latitude",tgtlats,"Longitude",tgtlons));

[Zmin, Zmax] = bounds(Z);

Zmean = mean(Z);

disp("Ground elevation (meters): Min Max Mean" + newline + ...

" " + round(Zmin) + " " + round(Zmax) + " " + round(Zmean))