Create table from structure - alignment

I have a structure with scalar fields, say mom, and I would like to display the values of the structure on the screen in aligned columns, possibly with some header. Here is a minimum working example:

mom.a = 1;
mom.b = 2;
mom.veryLongName = 3;

header = {'Moment'; 'Value'};

fnames = fieldnames(mom);
pvec   = zeros(numel(fnames),1);
for i = 1:numel(fnames)
    pvec(i) = mom.(fnames{i});
end

fprintf('%s \t \t %s \n',header{1},header{2});
for i = 1:numel(fnames)
    fprintf('%s \t \t %8.3f \n',fnames{i},pvec(i));
end

This code works OK but the problem is that columns are not aligned, especially if a field has a very long name. This is the output:

Moment 	 	 Value 
a 	 	    1.000 
b 	 	    2.000 
veryLongName 	 	    3.000 

Any suggestion is appreciated!

Answer 1

[Stephen23]

Simpler:

mom.a = 1;
mom.b = 2;
mom.veryLongName = 3;
hdr = {'Moment'; 'Value'};
tmp = [fieldnames(mom),struct2cell(mom)].';
fprintf(' %-20s %-s\n', hdr{:});

 Moment               Value

fprintf(' %-20s %-8.3f\n', tmp{:});

 a                    1.000   
 b                    2.000   
 veryLongName         3.000   

Answer 2

[per isakson]

I've modified the format specifier.

%%
mom.a = 1;
mom.b = 2;
mom.veryLongName = 3;
header = {'Moment'; 'Value'};
fnames = fieldnames(mom);
pvec   = zeros(numel(fnames),1);
for i = 1:numel(fnames)
    pvec(i) = mom.(fnames{i});
end
%%
name_len = max( [ strlength(header(1)); cellfun( @strlength, fnames ) ] ) + 2;
%%
fprintf( '%-*s%8s\n', name_len, header{1}, header{2} );

Moment           Value

for i = 1:numel(fnames)
    fprintf( '%-*s%8.3f\n', name_len, fnames{i}, pvec(i) );
end

a                1.000
b                2.000
veryLongName     3.000

Two thirds down the page fprintf, Write data to text file you find the description of this use of the format specifier. Search for the subsection "Field Width"