how to display data with commas or spaces

I am unable to find the syntax to display output data with commas or spaces used to separate groups of three digits in order to improve readability. For example, instead of 3.14159 display 3.141 59 or instead of 200000 display 200,000. Did I miss something?

[David Barry]

What do you mean by display? Are you referring to the output in the MATLAB command window if you call disp on the variable in question?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

There is no "format" option for that, and there is no format specifier for sprintf() or fprintf() for that. You will need to convert your values to string form and process the string.

[Christopher Ison]

Thank you, that's what I thought. Seems to me that this an output format long overdue. Perhaps someday.

Answer 2

[Image Analyst]

Use my CommaFormat(), attached. It turns a number into a string with commas inserted:

>> str = CommaFormat(12345678)
str =
12,345,678
>> fprintf('The answer is %s\n', str);
The answer is 12,345,678

[Christopher Ison]

Thank you. That's the method I thought I would have to create myself. I will give a try.