Writing Matlab Table to File

I am trying to find an easy way to print nicely-formatted tables to a text file. By "nicely-formatted," I mean the way that tables are displayed in the console (with spacing and column headers; see the example below). I was hoping 'fprintf' would do the trick, but this gives me an error. Surely there has to be a way?

>> names = ["Column 1", "Column 2"];
>> S = table([0; 1; 2; 3], [6; 4; 3; 7], 'VariableNames', names);
>> disp(S);
    Column 1    Column 2
    ________    ________

       0           6    
       1           4    
       2           3    
       3           7    

>> file = fopen("newfile.txt", 'w');
>> fprintf(file, S);
Error using fprintf
Invalid format.

Note: There is a function 'writeTable,' but that produces raw data files (eg. comma delimited files), which isn't what I want.

[Gabriel]

I know it's old but thank you very much. I was searching for this for a while.

Answer 1

[Ive J]

First of all, you are using fprintf incorrectly, and thankfully all MATLAB errors are quite intuitive. This one tells you, you've forgotten to define a format for fprintf. For more info, see the function help.

Next, you've also missed to read writetable help; otherwise you would figure it out that the function allows you to set the delimiter.

S = table([0; 1; 2; 3], [6; 4; 3; 7], 'VariableNames', {'col1', 'col2'});

% write to a tab delimited file
writetable(S, 'newfile.txt', 'delimiter', '\t')

% check it
type newfile.txt

col1	col2
0	6
1	4
2	3
3	7

% read it again in MATLBA
Snew = readtable('newfile.txt')
    col1    col2
    ____    ____

     0       6  
     1       4  
     2       3  
     3       7 

[Paschalis Economou]

Thanks for your response. I didn't think about using a tab-delimited file. However, it still isn't quite what I wanted. The display in the Matlab console has the columns centred, and a line separating the column headers from their contents. Obviously I could write a function to do all of that, but I was wondering if there was any easy way to just take the format displayed in the console, and print that directly to a file.

Answer 2

[Jeff Miller]

Try this:

str = formattedDisplayText(S);
str = erase(str,"<strong>");
str = erase(str,"</strong>");
fprintf(file,"%s",str);

[Steven Lord]

Rather than suppressing the formatting text manually, specify the SuppressMarkup name-value argument.

A = array2table(magic(3))

A = 3×3 table
    Var1    Var2    Var3
    ____    ____    ____

     8       1       6  
     3       5       7  
     4       9       2  

s1 = formattedDisplayText(A)

s1 = 
    "    Var1    Var2    Var3
         ____    ____    ____
     
          8       1       6  
          3       5       7  
          4       9       2  
     "

hasStrong1 = contains(s1, "strong")

hasStrong1 = logical
   1

s2 = formattedDisplayText(A, SuppressMarkup=true)

s2 = 
    "    Var1    Var2    Var3
         ____    ____    ____
     
          8       1       6  
          3       5       7  
          4       9       2  
     "

hasStrong2 = contains(s2, "strong")

hasStrong2 = logical
   0

[Stephen23]

T = table([0; 1; 2; 3], [6; 4; 3; 7], 'VariableNames',["Column 1", "Column 2"])

T = 4×2 table
    Column 1    Column 2
    ________    ________

       0           6    
       1           4    
       2           3    
       3           7    

S = formattedDisplayText(T)

S = 
    "    Column 1    Column 2
         ________    ________
     
            0           6    
            1           4    
            2           3    
            3           7    
     "

writelines(S,'test.txt')
type test.txt

    Column 1    Column 2
    ________    ________

       0           6    
       1           4    
       2           3    
       3           7