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Asked: 2026-05-26T11:48:18+00:00

I hwas wondering if, besides using format compact , there is a way to

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I hwas wondering if, besides using format compact, there is a way to make the display of matrices more compact or tighteer (maybe a third-party package that pre-formats the output of a matrix?)

Here is an example of a matrix displayed in MATLAB with format compact

enter image description here

As you can tell from the image above, there is plenty of white space between columns. The amount of white space between columns is fixed regardless of how many digits are printed overall per row or column.

This white space is wasted if the matrix has more columns than it can represent in a single row for a given width of the command window, since when that happens, MATLAB just breaks up the matrix into several submatrices, making it difficult to read them:

enter image description here

Addendum:

format short helps a bit since it reserves space for only 4 decimals (see the picture below) but is there anything else that makes it even tighter (e.g. something that gives the user control over how many characters are reserved per entry)?

For example, compare this

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1

with:

enter image description here

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The default spacing, while it probably can be changed by someone who really knows what they’re doing, isn’t changeable.

    If you really need to control how things are displayed, I suggest using the fprintf(1,'...') command. That way you can have as much control over how it looks as possible.

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