The FORMAT function allows users to set the default display method for floating point numbers in MATLAB.
The options for format are:
FORMAT Default. Same as SHORT.
FORMAT SHORT Scaled fixed point format with 5 digits.
FORMAT LONG Scaled fixed point format with 15 digits.
FORMAT SHORT E Floating point format with 5 digits.
FORMAT LONG E Floating point format with 15 digits.
FORMAT SHORT G Best of fixed or floating point format with 5 digits.
FORMAT LONG G Best of fixed or floating point format with 15 digits.
FORMAT HEX Hexadecimal format.
FORMAT + The symbols +, - and blank are printed for positive,
negative and zero elements. Imaginary parts are ignored.
FORMAT BANK Fixed format for dollars and cents.
FORMAT RAT Approximation by ratio of small integers.
Spacing:
FORMAT COMPACT Suppress extra line-feeds.
FORMAT LOOSE Puts the extra line-feeds back in.
For more information you should see the FORMAT documentation, accessible from MATLAB with the following command:
doc format
Here is a quick example:
>> format short
>> pi
ans =
3.1416
>> format long
>> pi
ans =
3.14159265358979
Currently, it is not possible to specify your own precision in MATLAB. A suggested work-around to this issue would be to use the CEIL and FLOOR functions, in combination with multiplication by magnitudes of 10, to round off to a particular precision.
For example, if you have a variable x = 3.1416, to obtain only three significant digits, you should do the following:
format short
x=pi
xtemp=x*1000
xtempt=ceil(xtemp)
x=xtempt/1000
