how to stop exponential notation, both in output and in variable editor

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Hi is there any way, preferably from code, to stop exponential notation.
So any figures I display, or look at in the variable editor, are always in the format 0.0000000234 etc never 2.34e-8
Thanks for any help,
Tom
  3 Comments
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 17 Dec 2019
Brando:
You could write a disp_no_scientific function that queried the existing format setting, and activated g format, and then returned to the previous format. However, as noted by Titus, format g does use scientific notation for sufficiently large or small values. There is no format setting for fixed point. If you need that then you should be using fprintf() or perhaps num2str() with an appropriate % format.

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Accepted Answer

Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 7 Dec 2011
Edited: John Kelly on 4 Jun 2014
For variables that you disp(), command
format long
or
format long g
  5 Comments
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 17 Dec 2019
Brando:
You could write a disp_no_scientific function that queried the existing format setting, and activated g format, and then returned to the previous format. However, as noted by Titus, format g does use scientific notation for sufficiently large or small values. There is no format setting for fixed point. If you need that then you should be using fprintf() or perhaps num2str() with an appropriate % format.

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More Answers (3)

Titus Edelhofer
Titus Edelhofer on 7 Dec 2011
Hi Tom,
as far as I know there is no way to force MATLAB to always use fixed notion. For generating output you can use fprintf with %f to use fixed notion.
Titus

Deepan J
Deepan J on 27 Sep 2018
format long g
  4 Comments

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SOREL
SOREL on 6 Jun 2018
Edited: Walter Roberson on 6 Jun 2018
Hi with the live editor I got a resul printed like this
A = 1.6050541506550198034773572941784e-40*d2
since 1.6e-40 is 0 is it possible to force the the A variable to be 0
  4 Comments
Walter Roberson
Walter Roberson on 17 Dec 2019
Note: there are additional new and quite obscure possibilities since R2019a. They are difficult to locate; if you do not already know they exist you are unlikely to find reference to them, and even if you know the exist you need a fair bit of experience with symbolic toolbox programming to make use of them :(
Steven Lord
Steven Lord on 24 Oct 2023
FYI if you're doing numerical calculations involving trigonometric functions multiples of pi and want to avoid the round-off error caused by the pi function not returning the exact transcendental value of π, use the sinpi or cospi functions instead.
y = cos(pi/2)
y = 6.1232e-17
z = cospi(1/2)
z = 0

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