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matlabeps

Prevent matlab from writing CreationDate to an eps file

I'm using matlab to write figures as eps files for use in LaTeX, using:

print( '-depsc', 'filename.eps');

and I'm keeping those eps files in version control. As I'm generating a lot of figures at once, but only changing one or two of them, often the only change in a particular eps file is:

-%%CreationDate: 06/29/2011  17:52:57
+%%CreationDate: 06/30/2011  19:18:03

which isn't valuable information. Is there a way to stop matlab from writing the CreationDate?

Dirty solutions encouraged...

Solution

  • One solution is to remove that line altogether, and rely on the file system to keep track of creation/modification date. This can be done in a lot of ways using common shell tools:

    # sed
sed -i file.eps '/^%%CreationDate: /d'

    or

    # grep
grep -v '^%%CreationDate: ' file.eps > tmp && mv tmp file.eps

    If you are on a Windows machine, MATLAB should have a Perl interpreter included:

    # perl
perl -i -ne 'print if not /^%%CreationDate: /' file.eps

    From inside MATLAB, you can maybe do the following to call a one-line Perl program:

    %# construct command, arguments and input filename (with quotes to escape spaces)
cmd = ['"' fullfile(matlabroot, 'sys\perl\win32\bin\perl.exe') '"'];
args = ' -i.bak -ne "print if not /^%%CreationDate: /" ';
fname = ['"' fullfile(pwd,'file.eps') '"'];

%# execute command
system([cmd args fname])