point decimal to comma

how i can get my result in matlab editor with comma decimal ? i need just to see my result in command window with a comma :)

[Rik]

As far as I'm aware this is not possible. You can use something like this:

strrep(sprintf('%.4f',n),'.',',')

[darova]

This didn't work for me

[dpb]

Can't read the tiny images to tell what didn't work, but Rik's code works fine in the command window (or as code in function as edited and then executed).

>> n=pi;
>> strrep(sprintf('%.4f',n),'.',',')
ans =
    '3,1416'
>> 

But, as he says, there's no way I know of to change the behavior in MATLAB to use comma instead of decimal directly.

I thought that was what OS LOCALE settings were for and the idea is that applications were to be written to honor those settings/preferences and deal with transparently. BUT AFAIK, that ideal isn't in MATLAB (if it is in any large app of the ilk; I don't know; never had the opportunity to try/test it).

Answer 1

[Rik]

So in summary: Matlab doesn't check the operating system's locale setting to determine the decimal separator. This question seems to suggest this behavior did actually happen in some situations, but it was (also?) a bug. There is even a doc page that suggests Mathworks will never change this behavior.

As a fallback you can convert a value to a char representation and use strrep on the result:

strrep(sprintf('%.4f',n),'.',',')
%or let Matlab determine an appropriate FormatSpec:
%strrep(num2str(n),'.',',')

The reason for these choices has probably to with code portability: now Matlab doesn't have to worry about the OS settings to interpret a plain text .m file. They could potentially allow it in live scripts, since those aren't plain text. I doubt you will convince them, so you might have to buy Mathworks or otherwise offer unreasonable amounts of money to have this implemented.

[dpb]

The only concession TMW has made so far is the new(ish) readXXX routines... readmatrix and readvars are the two I can think of now that have name-value pairs of 'Decimal|ThousandsSeparator' to define the behavior for text files.

I'm sure it's a nightmare to try to support their code base that began before anybody in US cared there was such a thing as Europe as a potential market for software; what more try to adapt to them furriners' ways...

I'd be much more pleased if they would just bring complex variables up to full-fledged citizen status. For a scientific-oriented package with a Fortran start, would think 30 years would have been long enough.

[Stephen23]

Changing to a decimal comma would then require redefining the comma-separated list separator (otherwise how to interpret max(1,2) ?). If we follow MS Excel's lead the list separator could be the semi-colon, in which case the semi-colon for matrix construction also needs to be redefined.. .to what? There might be other required changes too... it certainly would not be a trivial change to the language.