Question

I have a one-column array that I would like to sort in descending order. The array has values ranging from 0 to approximately 10^14. When I sort the array with

sorted = sort(A,'descend')

and try to look at the ten largest values, I find that

sorted(1:10)

gives me

1.0e+14 *

5.1093

0.0000

0.0000

0.0000

etc… — Displaying these first few, large entries tells me that there’s only one non-zero element, which isn’t true.
However, if I skip the first couple of entries, which are far greater than the rest of the array elements, I get

sorted(8:10) =

2.9754

2.4182

2.0799

Why does displaying these first few large array elements cause all others to be displayed as zero?

Answer 1

The first number in your list is a scale factor that multiplies the entire array that follows. Because of the difference in magnitude of the elements, you will need to play with the format settings. Try

    format long

or

    format long e

to see a better representation