Matlab: Intefacing with External Program

[I_am_learning]

I have an external program (A chess engine) that I want to interface with matlab. If I double-click the Engine.exe, it runs in a dos window. I can then type in commands like
'isready' and it responds with string such as 'ready'. I want to send command to it from MATLAB and receive the response in matlab.
Anyone knows how to do it?
I am using Windows.

 

[MATLABdude]

I'm guessing you don't just want to send a little text at the same time you invoke the program (or write a "script" for the program to execute)? If so, the following may be of interest to you:
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29594-textinject

 

[I_am_learning]

Yeah! I won't be passing arguments while starting the program. The program will be running separately (doing its calculations). I just want to communicate with it time to time. Your link shows way to type into any running windows program. Thats fine. But it would be more better if I could directly message the program instead of having to specify the co-ordinate for the input field of the program.
Moreover, I also need to read back the text-answer produced by the program.