Proper Formatting in the 'fprintf' function

I'm attempting to align certain text in a text file that I'm writing with matlab. Right now part of my code looks like this:

 '%6.4f\tTwFAM1Sh(2) - Mode 1, coefficient of x^2 term\r\n' ...
 '%6.4f\tTwFAM1Sh(3) -       , coefficient of x^3 term\r\n' ...                                                ''%6.4f\tTwFAM1Sh(4) -       , coefficient of x^4 term\r\n' ...
 '%6.4f\tTwFAM1Sh(5) -       , coefficient of x^5 term\r\n' ...

and it prints this:

 1.4401   TwFAM1Sh(2) - Mode 1, coefficient of x^2 term
 -0.4228 TwFAM1Sh(3) -       , coefficient of x^3 term
 -0.0239 TwFAM1Sh(4) -       , coefficient of x^4 term
 0.0027   TwFAM1Sh(5) -       , coefficient of x^5 term

but what I need it to do is this:

 0.8164  TwFAM1Sh(2) - Mode 1, coefficient of x^2 term
 0.3370  TwFAM1Sh(3) -       , coefficient of x^3 term
-0.3668  TwFAM1Sh(4) -       , coefficient of x^4 term
 0.4695  TwFAM1Sh(5) -       , coefficient of x^5 term

...The second part prints the numbers aligned from the last integer rather than aligning the first integer. Any guesses??

[Narges M]

maybe this helps:

http://www.mathworks.nl/help/matlab/matlab_prog/formatting-strings.html#bq0z8vc-6

Answer 1

[Cedric]

Right justification is the default and you would have to use '-' to enforce left justification. The issue with your code is that with the precision of 4 that you set up, negative numbers lead to a field width larger than 6. For what you are trying to achieve, what about increasing the field width? Illustration:

 >> fprintf('%7.4f\n', [pi, -pi]) ;
  3.1416
 -3.1416

 >> fprintf('%-7.4f\n', [pi, -pi]) ;
 3.1416 
 -3.1416

or decreasing the precision..

 >> fprintf('%6.3f\n', [pi, -pi]) ;
  3.142
 -3.142

[Zach Pacheco]

That makes sense, but I don't know if that second or third number will always be negative. The code I'm using can produce negative or positive values. That's why I'm trying to get a right hand alignment

[Cedric]

What I am showing with +/-pi is that it works for both when the field width is large enough for the negative sign, precisely because there is this right alignment by default.

[Zach Pacheco]

Increasing the field width worked!! Thank you very much