How to terminate a simulation by pushbutton in other script

Hello everyone, let me sketch the situation first.

I've made a GUI which has some uicontrols. On of the pushbuttons starts the simulation.

The execution of the simulation is situated in another script (lets call it 'sim1')

.

main GUI:

function varargout = maingui(varargin)  % standard function for GUI (not import for this thread)
...

function varargout = maingui_OutputFcn(hObject, eventdata, handles)  % standard function for GUI (not import for this thread)
...

function startsimulation_Callback(hObject, eventdata, handles)  % callback for the pushbutton

sim1(necessary variables)  % this refers to another script 'sim1.m'

sim1:

while condition
... script...
end

I want to stop the simulation by clicking on another pushbutton on the main GUI. But I don't know exactly how. Clicking on a pushbutton ('stop simulation') doesn't generate a callback when Matlab is going through the while loop.

.

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

[Jan]

There is no way to stop sim1 magically from the outside. But you could provide the handles of a GUI object (the button or the figure itself) as input, if you convert sim1 into a function (which would have many further advantages compared to a script). Then you can check the status of the GUI object, if the simulation contains a loop:

function mainGUI
FigH    = figure;
ButtonH = uicontrol('Style', 'ToggleButton', 'String', 'Stop', ...
                    'Callback', @StopButtonCB, 'UserData', 0);
pause(2);
StartSimulation(ButtonH);
end

function StopButtonCB(ButtonH, EventData)
set(ButtonH, 'UserData', 1, 'String', 'Wait');
end

function StartSimulation(ButtonH)
for k = 1:100
  drawnow;   % Give the GUI a chance to update the status
  if get(ButtonH, 'UserData') == 1
    fprintf('Stopped!\n');
    break;
  end

    fprintf('%s please wait...\n', datestr(now, 0));
    pause(1);   % Your calculations...
  end
  end

[K VdB]

Thanks for the answer!

I know that your solution will work. It is a method I would not like to use though.

I solved my problem by using the command 'drawnow' in the while loop.

Greetings

Kjartan