Width & Precision Number Formatting in Documentation

In the Matlab documentation for sprintf (https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/sprintf.html), in the Precision section, the second example shown is:

Example: The input arguments ('%6.4f',pi) are equivalent to ('%.*f',6,4,pi)

However, this is not the answer I see when trying it myself. I get 3.1416 for the first set of inputs and 4.000000 for the second set of inputs. I wonder if they meant to use a '*' instead of a '6' in the first set of inputs? If this is indeed an error, it exists in documentation for other functions as well (e.g., fprintf). Would anyone be able to help clarify?

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

Interesting. That seems to be a typographical error in the documentation:

‘Example: The input arguments ('%6.4f',pi) are equivalent to ('%.*f',6,4,pi)’

There is a missing asterisk. It should be:

Out = sprintf('%*.*f', 6,4,pi)

producing:

Out =
    '3.1416'

The example just below that has it correct:

‘Example: The input arguments ('%*.*f',6,4,pi,9,6,exp(1)) return '3.1416 2.718282', with 9 and 6 as the field width and precision for the output of exp(1).’