MATLAB Programming Fundamentals - MathWorks

Subtype

The subtype field is a single alphabetic character that immediately precedes the

conversion character. Without the subtype field, the conversion characters %o, %x, %X,

and %u treat input data as integers. To treat input data as floating-point values instead

and convert them to octal, decimal, or hexadecimal representations, use one of following

subtype specifiers.

b The input data are double-precision floating-point values rather than unsigned

integers. For example, to print a double-precision value in hexadecimal, use a

format like %bx.

t The input data are single-precision floating-point values rather than unsigned

integers.

Precision

The precision field in a formatting operator is a nonnegative integer that immediately

follows a period. For example, in the operator %7.3f, the precision is 3. For the %g

operator, the precision indicates the number of significant digits to display. For the %f,

%e, and %E operators, the precision indicates how many digits to display to the right of

the decimal point.

Display numbers to different precisions using the precision field.

txt = sprintf('%g %.2g %f %.2f', pi*50*ones(1,4))

txt =

'157.08 1.6e+02 157.079633 157.08'

While you can specify the precision in a formatting operator for input text (for example, in

the %s operator), there is usually no reason to do so. If you specify the precision as p, and

p is less than the number of characters in the input text, then the output contains only the

first p characters.

Field Width

The field width in a formatting operator is a nonnegative integer that specifies the

number of digits or characters in the output when formatting input values. For example,

in the operator %7.3f, the field width is 7.

6 Characters and Strings