Checking status of external process

[Quentin Spencer]

I want to run a command using the "system" function that starts an 
external program that performs some computations. I would like to be 
able to start it in the background, and then run a loop that periocially 
checks the status of the program, loads the results, and kills the 
external process if certain conditions are met, using a loop something 
like this:

PID = system(command, 1, 'async');
while(1)
   sleep(5)
   if( PID has completed)
      break
   else
      load results
      perform computations
      if(some condition)
         kill(PID);
         break;
      end
   end
end

The problem is that I don't know how to test to see whether PID has 
completed running. Is there any way to do this using built in octave 
commands? If not, how might I do this using system commands on a Linux 
system?

-Quentin



-------------------------------------------------------------
Octave is freely available under the terms of the GNU GPL.

Octave's home on the web:  http://www.octave.org
How to fund new projects:  http://www.octave.org/funding.html
Subscription information:  http://www.octave.org/archive.html
-------------------------------------------------------------