How can I flush the output of disp in Matlab or Octave?

Question

I have a program in Octave that has a loop - running a function with various parameters, not something that I can turn into matrices. At the beginning of each iteration I print the current parameters using disp.

The first times I ran it I had a brazillion warnings, and then I also got these prints. Now that I cleaned them up, I no longer see them. My guess is that they're stuck in a buffer, and I'll see them when the program ends or the buffer fills.

Is there any way to force a flush of the print buffer so that I can see my prints?

Answer 1

Use fflush(stdout) and/or fflush(stderr) to flush the buffer from disp().

Answer 2

As mentioned by moastab, fflush(stdout) works for Octave.

In MATLAB, use drawnow('update') to flush the output.

MATLAB's drawnow function will be familiar to those who control the redrawing of graphical objects in MATLAB, but it applies to the stdout stderr buffers as well. The 'update' option is not required, but limits the flushing to non-graphical queues. This detail is merely implied in the drawnow() documentation; I have verified it to work on fprintf calls in a loop.

Answer 3

Octave: You can turn off buffering of output by calling more off.

This will disable pagination such that all output is sent directly to the screen.

Answer 4

Put the following commands at the beginning of your section or your code:

page_screen_output(0);

page_output_immediately(1);