User`s guide

4 Stand-Alone Applications
4-36
Coding with M-Files Only
One way to create a stand-alone application is to write all the source code in
one or more M-files or MEX-files. Coding an application in M-files allows you
to take advantage of the MATLAB interpretive development environment.
Then, after getting the M-file version of your program working properly,
compile the code and build it into a stand-alone application.
Note It is good practice to avoid manually modifying the C or C++ code that
the MATLAB Compiler generates. If the generated C or C++ code is not to
your liking, modify the M-file (and/or the compiler options) and then
recompile. If you do edit the generated C or C++ code, remember that your
changes will be erased the next time you recompile the M-file. For more
information, see “Compiling MATLAB Provided M-Files Separately” on page
4-40 and “Interfacing M-Code to C/C++ Code” on page 5-46.
Consider a very simple application whose source code consists of two M-files,
mrank.m and main.m. This example involves C code; you use a similar process
(described below) for C++ code. In this example, the line
r = zeros(n,1)
preallocates memory to help the performance of the Compiler.
mrank.m returns a vector of integers, r. Each element of r represents the rank
of a magic square. For example, after the function completes,
r(3) contains the
rank of a 3-by-3 magic square:
function r = mrank(n)
r = zeros(n,1);
for k = 1:n
r(k) = rank(magic(k));
end
main.m
contains a “main routine” that calls mrank and then prints the results:
function main
r = mrank(5)
To compile these into code that can be built into a stand-alone application,
invoke the MATLAB Compiler:
mcc -mc main mrank