matlab

If your matlab version is too old to support the function

datetime

you could use following lines to print date and time

c = fix(clock);
time = date;
dateANDtime = sprintf('%s-%i:%i:%.0f', time, c(4),c(5),c(6));

dateANDtime e.g. 15-Mar-2015-21:29:46

If you need to read in a hdf5 file (.h5) in matlab, use the function h5read.

The syntax is

data = h5read(filename,datasetname);

The "filename" is obvious, e.g. /the/path/to/the/file/name.h5. The "datasetname" can be found by using the tool hdfview or by using the linux terminal tool h5ls

installation:

In matlab, if you want to process all files in folder and the files have rather different file names you can use following code snippet in Unix environments, like linux
 

If you want to start a matlab script from terminal (in linux or mac), you can use following command

matlab -nojvm -nodisplay -nosplash -r "addpath ('/path/to/script'), test_script(imgSize,'savepath'), exit"

Then matlab starts, executes the script and exits again.

test_script looks something like

function test_script(j,savepath)
img = rand(imgSize,imgSize);
imwrite(img, sprintf('%s/myTestImg.png',savepath),'png');
return

If you want to run a matlab script, that shows figures, on a remote machine without using ssh -X, start matlab with

matlab -nodesktop

and write following line in the matlab terminal, before starting your .m script

  set(0,'DefaultFigureVisible','off');

That prevents figures to pop up. To set the visibility on 'on', use

  set(0,'DefaultFigureVisible','on');

Sometimes you don't want to display figures or plots within matlab, e.g. if running matlab with the -nodesktop flag on a remote machine, e.g.

matlab -nodesktop

Include following lines in your code or paste it in the matlab command window to disable the figures:

set(0,'DefaultFigureVisible','off');

Sometimes it is also good to include

In Matlab saving  a figure as a pdf results in a rather bad quality. It is better to save the figure as .eps and convert it to .pdf, e.g. in Linux via the terminal tool

epstopdf File.eps 

NOTE, especially if the .eps file is in landscape orientation, the terminal tool ps2pdf does not work properly and cuts off pdfs in portrait orientation.