MATLAB: Determine how format was set for compact versus loose

compactformatloose

I have several toolboxes that overload the disp function, like vpi, hpf, sympoly, vpij, etc. I'd like to have my code learn what the format settings are to customize the output in a consistent way based on the format setting. Thus
get(0,'format')
ans =
shortG
tells me the current format setting. However, I'd like to know if compact or loose was set too. As far as I can see from the doc for format which tells us about the above trick, this is not possible for compact versus loose.
To be honest, I really think that format should tell me this directly. Thus I SHOULD be able to do this:
F = format
Error using format
Too many output arguments.
and have it return a struct that includes any format settings. As you see, that is not an option.

Best Answer

On my R2013b, 'compact' and 'loose' are values of property FormatSpacing.
 >> get( 0, 'FormatSpacing' )
 ans =
       compact
Related Question