creating complex MATLAB struct in C++ without using MATLAB Engine

I am looking for a way to implement a data converter in C++ that writes data into a complex MATLAB struct and stores it in a .mat file.

The struct content is should look like this:

struct1 {

substruct {

array21

array22

}

array11

array12

}

The implementation in MATLAB would for instance look like this:

% creating the substruct

Substruct(1).sec = 11;

Substruct(1).nsec = 386;

Substruct(2).sec = 12;

Substruct(2).nsec = 415;

Substruct(3).sec = 13;

Substruct(3).nsec = 543;

% creating struct1

struct1.substruct = Substruct(:);

struct1.my_double = [3912 4356 5638 6838]';

struct1.my_uint = 123;

Since the converter requires to run on computers which do not have MATLAB installed I want to avoid using the MATLAB Engine. Does anyone know if that is possible at all? Thank you for any advices.

[Guillaume]

In case, you're not aware, a simpler way to construct your substruct:

substruct = struct('sec', {11; 12; 13}, 'nsec', {386; 415; 543})

Answer 1

[Lukas Glueck]

There is a powerful open source library which enables you to store .mat files without need of having MATLAB installed and without using MATLAB compiler:

https://github.com/tbeu/matio

Some more examples about how to use the library can be found here:

http://na-wiki.csc.kth.se/mediawiki/index.php/MatIO

https://github.com/NJannasch/matio-examples

Answer 2

[Guillaume]

The documentation of the mat-file format 5 is publicly available, so you can use that to construct your mat file.

Unfortunately, I'm not aware of the same documentation for the newer 7.x mat file formats but any version of matlab (except extremely old ones) can open version 5.