MATLAB: %16.8f what does the 16 and 8 means

Question

i think 8 decimal point.

what does 16 means..

fprintf(outfile, ' %16.8f %16.8f %16.8f %16.8f %12.9f %12.9f %12.9f\n',… satrec.t,ro(1),ro(2),ro(3),vo(1),vo(2),vo(3));

Answer 1

In %16.8f, 16 is the minimum number of total characters to print for the value and 8 is the number of digits to print after the decimal point. For a number close to 1, e.g., 16 characters will be printed (some are leading blanks). For a number that is very large, more than 16 characters will be printed (whatever it takes to print all the leading digits, plus the 8 digits after the decimal point).