Print user-defined error messages as a table

Hello all,

I would like to display an error message that informs the user of a function of the options that he has avaliable. Although its possible to print it in a straight line, I would like to write them as a table, because it looks prettier :)

So far I have this:

error_msg = ['Polygon not supported. List of supported polygons is:', ...
                    ' Triangle Square Pentagon Hexagon Heptagon Octagon'];
                error(error_msg);

This throws the error message:

-> Polygon not supported. List of supported polygons is: Triangle Square Pentagon Hexagon Heptagon Octagon.

I would like to show it like (the bullets do not matter, I just wrote them here for formatting):

-> Polygon not supported. List of supported polygons is:

• Triangle
• Square
• Pentagon
• Hexagon
• Heptagon
• Octagon

Is this possible to do? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

[Adam Danz]

msg = sprintf(['Polygon not supported. List of supported polygons is:\n' ...
    ' Triangle\n Square\n Pentagon\n Hexagon\n Heptagon\n Octagon']); 
error(msg)  %#ok<SPERR> 

The key is to use line breaks in the error message. I've done this using sprintf() along with \n to indicate a line break.

Another method is to use newline() within a character or string array.

msg = ['Polygon not supported. List of supported polygons is:', newline(), ...
    'Triangle',newline(),'Square',newline(),'Pentagon',newline(),...
    'Hexagon',newline(),'Heptagon',newline(),'Octagon']; 

[Jesus Sanchez]

Thanks! I messed up and wrote "/n" instead of "\n" when I tried to do it with like breaks, so I was quite confused