How can I stop MATLAB from returning until after a command-line script completes?

Question

I see in the MATLAB help (matlab -h) that I can use the -r flag to specify an m-file to run. I notice when I do this, MATLAB seems to

Answer 1

Quick answer:

matlab -wait -nosplash -nodesktop -r waitHello

In Matlab 7.1 (the version I have) there is an undocumented command line option -wait in matlab.bat. If it doesn't work for your version, you could probably add it in. Here's what I found. The command at the bottom that finally launches matlab is (line 153):

start "MATLAB" %START_WAIT% "%MATLAB_BIN_DIR%\%MATLAB_ARCH%\matlab" %MATLAB_ARGS%

The relevant syntax of the start command (see "help start" in cmd.exe) in this case is:

start ["window title"] [/wait] myprogram.exe args ...

A bit higher, among all of the documented command line options, I found (line 60):

) else if (%opt%) == (-wait) (
  set START_WAIT=/wait
) else (

So specifying -wait should do what you want, as long as you're also exiting matlab from your script (otherwise it will wait for you to terminate it interactively).