running bash script on server to execute multiple MATLAB scripts

Question

I'm not a programmer, just a chemist. I'm writing a bash script, which I want to run on the server and expect it to do the following:

1. Open a terminal
2. Loop over folders slave_1, slave_2, ..., slave_N for each folder open a tab, start up MATLAB (maltab -nodesktop), cd to the folder, and run the script slave_process.

Here is what I have so far:

#!/bin/bash

for i in {1..5}
do
gnome-terminal --tab  --working-directory="/usr/local/MATLAB/MATLAB_Production_Server/R2015a/bin" --command='./matlab -nodesktop; cd /mnt/projects/slave_$i; -nosplash -r slave_process'
done

exit 0

Can some help me to get the script to work? I'm not in the sudoers file, so can't change anything on the server.

Update. The answer by @muru does the trick but it starts a new terminal at each loop iteration, which is a pain since I need to run around 200 MATLAB instances. I want to have multiple tabs in the same terminal (or no terminal at all is fine as well). Here is my modified code, which does not work:

args=()
for i in {1..5}; do
    cmd=working-directory='/mnt/projects/slave_$i' --command='/usr/local/MATLAB/MATLAB_Production_Server/R2015a/bin/matlab -nodesktop -nosplash -r slave_process'
    args+=(--tab-with-profile=Default -e "sh -c \"$cmd; bash\"")
done

gnome-terminal "${args[@]}"

Can someone help here?

Answer 1

Notes:

• Variable expansion doesn't work inside single quotes '' - so slave_$i in the second part of your command will remain slave_$i.
• Since you know the path of the matlab command, run it directly using the full path, instead of starting in that directory and using ./matlab.
• If -nosplash -r slave_process are arguments to matlab, they should be in the same command.
• exit 0 is unnecessary.

Consider something like:

#!/bin/bash

for i in {1..5}
do
    gnome-terminal --tab  --working-directory="/mnt/projects/slave_$i" \
      --command='/usr/local/MATLAB/MATLAB_Production_Server/R2015a/bin/matlab -nodesktop -nosplash -r slave_process'
done