External Interfaces

Getting Information About the Library

You can use either of two functions to get information on the functions available in a library that you have loaded:

• libfunctions('libname')
  libfunctionsview('libname')
  

The main difference is that libfunctions displays the information in the MATLAB Command Window (and you can assign its output to a variable), and libfunctionsview displays the information as a graphical display in a new window.

To see what functions are available in the libmx library, use libfunctions, specifying the library filename as the only argument. Note that you can use the MATLAB command syntax (with no parentheses or quotes required) when specifying no output variables:

• libfunctions libmx
  
  Methods for class lib.libmx:
  mxAddField               mxGetFieldNumber  mxIsLogicalScalarTrue
  mxArrayToString          mxGetImagData     mxIsNaN
  mxCalcSingleSubscript    mxGetInf          mxIsNumeric
  mxCalloc                 mxGetIr           mxIsObject
  mxClearScalarDoubleFlag  mxGetJc           mxIsOpaque
  mxCreateCellArray        mxGetLogicals     mxIsScalarDoubleFlagSet
         .                      .                  .
         .                      .                  .
  

To list the functions along with their signatures, use the -full switch with libfunctions. This shows the MATLAB syntax for calling functions written in C. The data types used in the argument lists and return values match MATLAB types, not C types. See the section Data Conversion for more information on these data types.

• libfunctions libmx -full
  
  Methods for class lib.libmx:
  [mxClassID, MATLAB array] mxGetClassID(MATLAB array)
  [lib.pointer, MATLAB array] mxGetData(MATLAB array)
  [MATLAB array, voidPtr] mxSetData(MATLAB array, voidPtr)
  [lib.pointer, MATLAB array] mxGetPr(MATLAB array)
  [MATLAB array, doublePtr] mxSetPr(MATLAB array, doublePtr)
  uint8 mxIsFinite(double)
  uint8 mxIsInf(double)
           .
           .
  

Viewing Functions in a GUI Interface

The libfunctionsview function creates a new window that displays all of the functions defined in a specific library. For each method, the following information is shown.

Heading	Description
Return Type	Data types that the method returns
Name	Function name
Arguments	Valid data types for input arguments
Inherited From	Not relevant for shared library functions

The following command opens the window shown below for the libmx library:

As was true for the libfunctions function, the data types displayed here are MATLAB types. See the section Data Conversion for more information on these data types.

Loading and Unloading the Library

Invoking Library Functions

© 1994-2005 The MathWorks, Inc.