Display struct array as a table

I have a struct array of the form:

%--- Define stuct array 'sites' ---%
sites(1).code = 'LP5';
sites(1).name = 'Liverpool';
sites(1).comments = '';

sites(1).code = 'LDN';
sites(1).name = 'London';
sites(1).comments = 'Capital of the UK';

sites(1).code = 'MC1';
sites(1).name = 'Manchester';
sites(1).comments = '';

%--- And so on 'n' times ---%

I would like to be able to print this data out in the same format as a MATLAB table. Something that looks like (with text wrapping for long comments or names):

Code Name Comments

LP5 Liverpool

LDN London Capital of

the UK

MC1 Manchester

I know this is possible for regular none-array-like structs but not for struct arrays. with my current code:

function listSites(sites)
    disp('--------------------');
    for n = 1 : length(sites)
        display(struct2table(sites(n)));
    end
    disp('--------------------');
end

I just get:

Variables:

name: 14×1 cell array of character vectors

code: 14×1 cell array of character vectors

comments: 14×1 cell array of character vectors

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

struct2table does that:

>> %--- Define stuct array 'sites' ---%
sites(1).code = 'LP5';
sites(1).name = 'Liverpool';
sites(1).comments = '';
sites(2).code = 'LDN';
sites(2).name = 'London';
sites(2).comments = 'Capital of the UK';
sites(3).code = 'MC1';
sites(3).name = 'Manchester';
sites(3).comments = '';
%--- And so on 'n' times ---%
>> struct2table(sites)

ans =

  3×3 table

    code         name             comments      
    _____    ____________    ___________________

    'LP5'    'Liverpool'     ''                 
    'LDN'    'London'        'Capital of the UK'
    'MC1'    'Manchester'    ''                 

[S G]

Thanks, turns out I just didn't need the for loop!

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

SG, two things:

1) Display for the table data type is intended to show the contents of the data container. It sounds almost like you are looking for a "pretty print" facility. If you're happy with table's display, that's great, but it's not really intended for pretty printing.

2) You should consider using a table instead of a struct array for those data. It looks like you have tabular data, and a table is likely to be more convenient.

[AMM]

Similar issue here. I am using struct2table(myStruct) to visualize what's going on inside a script. Is there any way to suppress the "ans =" in the command window when printing such a table? If I try something like

myTable = struct2table(myStruct);
fprintf('Here is my table: %s', myTable);

it complains— it seems like the various PRINTFs cannot treat a table as a string, so they can't be used this way. I think I've tried all the obvious format specifiers, but no luck so far.

Very minor nitpick, obviously, but I'm curious to learn if there's a cleaner way to handle this.

[AMM]

...Duh. I just realized

myTable = struct2table(myStruct);
fprintf('Here is my table:\n');
disp(myTable);

does what I need. Sorry for the query spam.

[Peter Perkins]

I hesitate to even suggest this, but

>> t = array2table(rand(5,3));
>> s = evalc('disp(t)');
>> fprintf('My table is:\n%s',s)
My table is:
      Var1        Var2        Var3  
    ________    _________    _______
    0.079917      0.43643    0.54402
     0.16308    0.0063417    0.38973
      0.9033      0.58479    0.21583
     0.78299      0.51848    0.38577
     0.74668      0.06685    0.62686

[AMM]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the additional idea. I never thought about any of the EVAL variants, probably out of old habit (I've seen them abused quite a few times to cause havoc via deliberately malformed input). But this works great, too. Thanks!