How to display matlab content into columns using fprintf - matlab

Question

I'm looking to display data in two columns. The first column will have a movies name and the second a rating out of 5. I want the data to be displayed in such a way that the ratings, regardless of the length of the movie title all display in on vertical line. I currently have:
Toy Story (1995) : 4
GoldenEye (1995) : 3
Seven (Se7en) (1995) : 4
Braveheart (1995) : 1
Bad Boys (1995) : 3
Batman Forever (1995) : 2
Star Wars (1977) : 5
Shawshank Redemption, The (1994) : 5
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) : 3
Aladdin (1992) : 3
I'm using the following code:
fprintf('%s : \t %d\n', movieList{i},user_ratings(i));
where the above line is obviously in a loop. I tried using a tab to see if things would line up but clearly not much luck. Any ideas on how I could achieve this?

Answer 1

If you would like to keep things simple and your loop, you may try this -
lens = cellfun(#numel,movieList);
pdlens = max(lens) - lens;
for k = 1:numel(movieList)
fprintf('%s%s :\t%d\n', movieList{k},repmat(' ',1,pdlens(k)),user_ratings(k))
end
Output -
Toy Story (1995) : 4
GoldenEye (1995) : 3
Seven (Se7en) (1995) : 4
Braveheart (1995) : 1
Bad Boys (1995) : 3
Batman Forever (1995) : 2
Star Wars (1977) : 5
Shawshank Redemption, The (1994) : 5
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) : 3
Aladdin (1992) : 3
Alternate solution based on arrayfun -
spc = repmat(' ',numel(movieList),1)
pdc = arrayfun(#(x,t) repmat(x,1,t),spc,pdlens,'uni',0) %//pdlens is from earlier code
spcell = repmat(cellstr({' '}),numel(movieList),1)
out = strcat(movieList,pdc,':',spcell,num2str(user_ratings')) %//'
char(out) %// Display the text

Answer 2

You can try this, it really not beautifull but :
maxVal = 0
[~,nbMovie] = size(movieList);
for i = 1:nbMovie
maxVal = max(maxVal,length(movieList{i}))
end
wordPrint = strcat('%',int2str(maxVal),'s');
totalPrint = strcat(wordPrint,' : %f\n');
for i = 1:nbMovie
fprintf(totalPrint ,movieList{i},user_ratings(i));
end
EDIT
And for a left align for the word use the symbol '-' before the number, like this :
wordPrint = strcat('%-',int2str(maxVal),'s');