Emacs MATLAB-mode

MathWorks MATLAB® and GNU Emacs integration:

1. matlab-mode for editing *.m files.
   • Edit MATLAB code with syntax highlighting and smart indentation.
   • Lint MATLAB code with fix-it’s using the MATLAB Code Analyzer.
2. M-x matlab-shell for running and debugging MATLAB within Emacs (Unix-only).
   • matlab-shell uses company-mode for completions.
3. MATLAB and http://orgmode.org for creation of scientific papers, theses, and documents.
   • Org enables literate programming which directly supports reproducible research by allowing scientists and engineers to write code along with detailed explanations in natural language.
   • You author code plus natural language descriptive text in *.org files. When you evaluate MATLAB or other language code blocks within the *.org files, org inserts the results back into the *.org file.
   • You can combine multiple *.org files into one final document, thus enabling larger scientific documents.
   • See ./examples/matlab-and-org-mode/ to get started. This directory contains a PDF generated from ./examples/matlab-and-org-mode/matlab-and-org-mode.org.
4. tlc-mode for editing *.tlc files. The Target Language Compiler (TLC) is part of Simulink® Coder™.

Installation

Install via MELPA

Installing via MELPA is recommended because MELPA will contain the latest validated release.

Add to your ~/.emacs:

(add-to-list 'package-archives '("melpa" . "http://melpa.org/packages/") t)

then run

M-x RET package-list-packages RET

Install from this repository

Build:

cd /path/to/Emacs-MATLAB-mode

# Build lisp and run tests (requires MATLAB executable):
make
# Alternatively, build lisp and run tests using a specific MATLAB executable:
make MATLAB_EXE=/path/to/matlab

# If desired, you can separate the building of lisp and running tests using:
make lisp
make tests
make tests MATLAB_EXE=/path/to/matlab # if using a specific MATLAB executable

Add the following to your ~/.emacs file:

(add-to-list 'load-path "/path/to/Emacs-MATLAB-mode")
(load-library "matlab-autoload")

MathWorks Products (https://www.mathworks.com)

Emacs MATLAB-mode is designed to be compatible with the last six years of MathWorks products and may support even older versions of MathWorks products.

License

GPL3, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html (see License.txt)

Community Support

MATLAB Central

FAQ

How do I customize matlab-mode?

You can configure matlab-emacs using the “matlab” or “matlab-shell” customization groups:

Emacs -> Options -> Customize Emacs -> Specific Group

How do I customize “edit file.m” behavior?

By default when you run

M-x matlab-shell

>> edit file.m

file.m will open in emacs using ‘emacsclient -n’. matlab-shell achieve this behavior by instructing MATLAB to use ‘emacsclient -n’ as the external text editor.

You can customize this by setting `matlab-shell-emacsclient-command’ in the matlab-shell customization group. You can change this command to what’s appropriate. If you set it to the empty string, ‘edit file.m’ will use the default MATLAB editor setting.

The default MATLAB editor setting is controlled in the MATLAB preferences, (e.g. R2018a Home tab, Environment section, Preferences) where you can select which editor you want to edit a text file. MATLAB Editor or an external text editor. If you always want to use Emacs as your matlab editor even when running MATLAB outside of emacs, select Text editor and set it to the appropriate ‘emacsclient -n’ command.

The code-sections are not highlighted properly. What do I do?

There can be several reasons for this. One reason would be if you are using syntax highlighting from a different package (such as tree-sitter) which is over-riding the font-lock provided by matlab-mode.

In this case, add the following hook to your config:

(add-hook 'matlab-sections-mode-hook
	  (lambda () (interactive)
            (font-lock-add-keywords
	     nil
	     `((,matlab-sections-section-break-regexp
                1 'matlab-sections-section-break-face prepend)))
            (font-lock-flush)))

Ensure that this is included after matlab-mode as well as your syntax highlighter are initialized in your config.

History

matlab-mode has a history dating back many years. Older contributions can be found in https://sourceforge.net/projects/matlab-emacs/.