How do I make my fprintf columns output neatly?

I have some code that generates x, y, and z data points that I want to output to a text file in columns. I can't have a bunch of 0s, so I've replaced the 0s with NaN in my vectors. When I go to output my code, this makes the columns look funny. How can I make it so that there is extra spacing included in the points where a NaN value exists so that everything stays in 3 columns?

close all
clear
clc

dataPoints = [NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN 1 2 3 4;
	157.66 157.66 157.66 157.66 157.66 157.66 157.66 157.66 157.66 157.66 157.660;
	NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN NaN 67.1064 67.115646 67.144455 67.194319 67.267807];

fileNameOut = 'output.txt';
fid = fopen(fileNameOut,'w');
fprintf(fid,'x\t\ty\t\tz\n');
fprintf(fid,'%f\t%f\t%f\n',dataPoints);
fclose all;

This generates a text file that looks like this

x		y		z
NaN	157.660000	NaN
NaN	157.660000	NaN
NaN	157.660000	NaN
NaN	157.660000	NaN
NaN	157.660000	NaN
NaN	157.660000	NaN
NaN	157.660000	67.106400
1.000000	157.660000	67.115646
2.000000	157.660000	67.144455
3.000000	157.660000	67.194319
4.000000	157.660000	67.267807

But I need it to look more like this

x		y		       z
NaN	        157.660000	NaN
NaN	        157.660000	NaN
NaN	        157.660000	NaN
NaN	        157.660000	NaN
NaN	        157.660000	NaN
NaN	        157.660000	NaN
NaN	        157.660000	67.106400
1.000000	157.660000	67.115646
2.000000	157.660000	67.144455
3.000000	157.660000	67.194319
4.000000	157.660000	67.267807

Answer 1

[Riccardo Scorretti]

Hi. I think it is better to work with fixed length fields rather than tabulations (which have the problem of being system-dependent). Just try like this:

fprintf(fid,'%11.6f %11.6f %11.6f\n',dataPoints);

Of course you can adjust the numbers 11 (= minimal number of characters) and 6 (= number of decimal numbers) to your personal needs.

[Isaac Gruver]

That did the trick, thanks :)