1.4. Display Formats

The user can control the format in which MATLAB displays output on the screen. In Tutorial 1-1, the output format is fixed-point with four decimal digits (called short), which is the default format for numerical values. The format can be changed with the format command. Once the format command is entered, all the output that follows is displayed in the specified format. Several of the available formats are listed and described in Table 1-2.

MATLAB has several other formats for displaying numbers. Details of these formats can be obtained by typing help format in the Command Window. The format in which numbers are displayed does not affect how MATLAB computes and saves numbers.