where is the setting to page/summarize large tables?

I looked but could not find where this is in the documentation. I upgraded to R2025a and now tables spool the entire contents into the command output when I just want the summary.

Surely I am not searching in the right places or with the right words, but it's driving me nuts enough to post the question.

I want the following behavior, with the middle 27M rows hidden, by default like my other instances.

>> T

ans =

27289380×3 table

ID     t_sec      value
_____    __________    ______

1      88171.466      12  
1      88204.766       5  
1      88238.066      11  
1      88271.366       9  
1      88304.666      15  
1      88337.966      14  
1      88371.266      12  
1      88404.566       9  
1      88437.866       5  

:          :           :   

475     228022.665       1  
475     228060.165       1  
475     228096.005      16  
475     228133.505      13  
475     228171.005       2  
475     228209.745       8  
475     228247.005       7  
475     228279.225       8  
475     228314.425       6  

instead of the full output when working interactively.

Answer 1

[Meg Noah]

Did you try (and put a ';' at the end of the line to avoid outputting the whole table to console):

summary(T)

Answer 2

[John D'Errico]

We don't want you to go nuts. But, I'm a little surprised, as tables do what you want already by default, using R2025a, on my computer.

T = table(randi(100,[1000,3]))
T =
  1000×1 table
          Var1      
    ________________
    82     64     75
    91     36     90
    13    100     25
    92     23     13
    64     66     23
    10     61     36
    28     39     29
    55     15     93
    96      3      6
    97     43     60
    16     19     17
    98     73     84
    96     38     17
           :        
    42     36     15
    40     55     38
    82     35     63
    32     63    100
    82     80     52
    79     75    100
    86     13     23
    51     83     40
    64      3     70
    96     42      7
    45     74     75
     7     79     43
    87     37     82
	Display all 1000 rows.

Note the split in the table. As I said, it worked with no problem for me. So why did it not work for you? (A great deal of anguished thought ensues behind the scenes ... Well, a little. And ok, the word anguished might be a bit of hype. Hey, I thought about it for a few seconds.)

I next noted that disp(T) dumps the entire table to the command window, whereas display does the split as you want, then giving you a link to show the entire table. This suggested I look at the version of display that applies to tabular objects. The appropriate way to look at the code in the version of display used for tables is:

type @tabular/display

I've not shown the complete function as it appears on my screen. Sorry. It has a lot of crap that you won't really care about, and will just confuse things. But in there, I see the sub-function shouldTruncate.

And in there... I see the comment:

% check to see if we're displaying somewhere where hyperlinks work,

% that the table height is higher than the 20 row threshold, and that

% we're not truncating when the table can almost fit in the command

% window. If all true, then truncate

Hmm. That suggests what I think to be the answer. If MATLAB decides it cannot generate a hyperlink to display the entire table as an option at the end, then it will not truncate the table for you. And a truncated table is exactly what you want to see.

For example, I ran the above example where I display the table on my own home computer. I did not run it in Answers MATLAB, since it works differently, and will not generate a hyperlink. The point is, MATLAB online seems to have issues with the display form you want to see.

On my computer, the test it uses is:

matlab.internal.display.isHot
ans =
logical
1

Which, as you can see, results in a value of true, when done on MY computer.

Now, you do not tell us where you are running this. But I would conjecture this is why you are having a problem, that @tabular/display has decided it cannot offer the display form you want to see.

[John D'Errico]

See, as a way of comparison, what MATLAB tells me, if I try the test here:

matlab.internal.display.isHot

ans = logical
   0

This tells @tabular/display to NOT truncate tables created in online MATLAB. Now see what happens when I dump a table to the screen online:

T = table(randi(100,[1000,3]))

T = 1000×1 table
         Var1     
    ______________

    41    62    21
    91    58    55
    52    53     1
    54    33    14
    50    56    51
    66    21    61
     7    28    11
    23    66    52
    40    71    65
    74    26     7
    39    45     4
    73    47    94
    28    52    73
    47    77    66
    30    79    28
    32    89    14

We get different behavior online, than the split table my home version generated.

[jessupj]

Hey John. Thanks for the rundown. This is a fresh install of R2025a on a linux desktop system using hte full matlab desktop environment. It default behavior is acting differently than previous installations.

matlab.internal.display.isHot 

is definitelly returning a big fat zero in R2025a whereas the R2024a/b which we haven't purged yet return 1. So that explains the behavior and nature of hte problem. The generated hyperlink is presuablly the clickable "Show all bazillion rows" link generated in the command window.

What's the right way to manually set this variable systemwide for all instance of R2025a?

[Walter Roberson]

Datapoint: on Intel MacOS 15.6, isHot returns 1 at the command line. (It probably returns 0 in mlx file)