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I would like to display numbers like 9.0001 and 10.0001 in the fixed-width form of xx.xxxx. This seems like a perfect job for:

NumberForm[#, {6, 4}, NumberPadding -> {"0", "0"}] & /@ {9.0001, 10.0001}

But this returns {009.0001, 010.0001}, which has one extra leading zero.

Reducing the number of digits doesn't fix this.

NumberForm[#, {5, 4}, NumberPadding -> {"0", "0"}] & /@ {9.0001, 10.0001}

{09.0001,010.0000}

Why is at least one copy of the left NumberPadding always being added, even when this makes the total number of digits exceed n, the desired total number of digits?

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  • $\begingroup$ @MikeHoneychurch, thanks for the reminder. While your answer contains a good solution to the problem, m_goldberg's answers the exact question. $\endgroup$
    – ArgentoSapiens
    Commented May 20, 2014 at 11:48

1 Answer 1

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I think Mathematica is padding one extra position on the left to preserve space for a possible minus sign.

NumberForm[#, {6, 4}, NumberPadding -> {"*", "0"}] & /@ 
  {1234.567, -1234.567, 12.34567, -12.34567, 1.234567, -1.234567}

 {*1234.5700, -1234.5700, *12.3457, -12.3457, **1.2346, *-1.2346}
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