format compact and loose

[Zbigniew Komarnicki]

Hello,

what for is 'format compact' and 'format loose'? There no difference, please 
see on the code below:

octave:16> format
octave:17> rand(2,3,3)
ans =

ans(:,:,1) =

   0.385381   0.102281   0.081179
   0.191353   0.688788   0.702630

ans(:,:,2) =

   0.27829   0.60780   0.25063
   0.97789   0.83470   0.98665

ans(:,:,3) =

   0.39944   0.46261   0.22852
   0.96768   0.91418   0.43441



octave:18> format compact
octave:19> rand(2,3,3)
ans =

ans(:,:,1) =

   0.924453   0.368667   0.721917
   0.161212   0.068016   0.298568

ans(:,:,2) =

   0.60422   0.78672   0.11505
   0.76467   0.71606   0.54340

ans(:,:,3) =

   0.805744   0.532713   0.039782
   0.739460   0.911434   0.187737



octave:20> format loose
octave:21> rand(2,3,3)
ans =

ans(:,:,1) =

   0.356031   0.067546   0.881393
   0.575508   0.449188   0.488027

ans(:,:,2) =

   0.61541   0.72712   0.38217
   0.83638   0.40433   0.27184

ans(:,:,3) =

   0.343706   0.733566   0.967689
   0.032310   0.040119   0.957366



octave:22>


There no difference. Help is inadequate:

    `compact'
          Remove extra blank space around column number labels
          producing more compact output with more data per page.

    `loose'
          Insert blank lines above and below column number labels to
          produce a more readable output with less data per page.
          (default).


What worse there is too much empty lines at the end, see:

ans(:,:,3) =

   0.343706   0.733566   0.967689
   0.032310   0.040119   0.957366
one empty line      |
second empty line   |  <-- not needed 3 empty lines
third empty line    |
octave:22>             <-- prompt line



Is there any chance to correct it as written in help (help format) ?


Thank you for your great work. 

I work on Debian/Linux:
GNU Octave, version 3.2.4
Copyright (C) 2009 John W. Eaton and others.
This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  For details, type `warranty'.

Octave was configured for "i486-pc-linux-gnu".

Best regards,
Zbigniew