Where is your preferred column width?
Chen Lin
featured this
Poll will close on 30 Jun 2026
<80 characters
10%
80 characters
31%
100 characters
21%
120 characters
19%
>120 characters
10%
something else (comment below)
10%
42 votes
6 Comments
Time Descending
Column width for what? The Editor? For me that depends on the number of open files. I like it to be wide enough to see all tabs.
I no longer have a predetermined fixed line length (even Fortran now has gone to free format) although I find that with high res monitors and reasonable font/size about 120 charachters fits nicely leavig room on the display for the base desktop to also be accessible (to get to the command window for trying out something, say).
Given that real estate is now available my coding style has evloved that code itself is probably 90% <60 characters on a line but comments are now (vertically aligned) at the end of line.
I just learned (by testing it in R2024b and R2025a) that MATLAB has a cap for this option: 160.
On the other hand, there is no minimum, other than that it has to be a positive number. I am not sure why having a column delimiter at one character would be useful, but it is allowed.
I can imagine wanting it at 0 to essentially hide the line, but 1 character is an odd choice to me. I'm more surprised that the cap is only 160. I would have expected it to be much higher than double the default (or no cap to exist at all).
Did you test whether the limit also exists if you try to set it by code?
That setting does not need to accept zero, as there is a toggle to turn off display of that line.
I was also surprised that the cap was 160; I would have expected 200 or 300.
I did not test setting that limit programmatically.
Sign in to participate
