How can I use the "\t" format in a listbox in MATLAB to place a tab in a string expression?

I would like to be able to add a tab to a string with the "\t" format rather than single spaces.

Here is an example:

bas{1}.string=sprintf('\t\thello\tagain');

textbox=uicontrol('Units','normalized',...

'max',2,...

'FontName','arial','FontSize',12,...

'Style','listbox','Selected','on',...

'Position',[0 .5 .5 .5],'Value',1);

set(textbox,'String',bas{1}.string);

The example only produces empty square boxes in place of the "\t".

Answer 1

[MathWorks Support Team]

The ability to use the "\t" format in a listbox in MATLAB to place a tab in a string expression is not available.

As a workaround, you can use spaces along with a fixed-width font to align the columns.

figure

h1 = uicontrol(gcf, 'style', 'listbox', ...

                'position', [100 100,300,100], ...

                'background', [1 1 1] );

data1 = 1:0.1:3;

data2 = 10:1:30;

for k = 1:21

    str(k) = {sprintf('%2i  %5.2f  %3i', k, ...

              data1(k), data2(k))};

end

set(h1, 'string', str )

set(h1,'FontName','FixedWidth')

If you want text to use a fixed-width font that looks good in any locale, you should set FontName to the string FixedWidth

set(text_handle,'FontName','FixedWidth')

This eliminates the need to hardcode the name of a fixed-width font, which may not display text properly on systems that do not use ASCII character encoding (such as in Japan where multibyte character sets are used). A properly written MATLAB application that needs to use a fixed-width font should set the "FontName" property to "FixedWidth" (note that this string is case sensitive) and rely on the "FixedWidthFontName" property to be set correctly in the end-user's environment.