Personally, I prefer the arraignment in comment #5 over the one in comment #4.

If you agree, please go ahead an push a modified patch.

Thanks.
That looks good to me.

The other columns in the output of `whos` containing text are left aligned. The "Bytes" column is right aligned (which seems good to me). Should the "Attr" column be left aligned like the other text columns? Or should it be right aligned like it seems to be currently (at least for the heading)?

>> test_persist
Variables visible from the current scope:

variables in scope: test_persist: /home/osboxes/Documents/Repositories/Octave/octave-2/.build/test_persist.m

    Attr Name          Size                     Bytes  Class
    ==== ====          ====                     =====  =====
   cs  p test_var      1x1                         40  double

Total is 1 element using 40 bytes

But that is probably something that we could also decide on at a later point.

Attached is a first try at implementing this feature.  It seems to work, although I'm not sure I quite like the arrangement of attributes on the left-hand side.



(file #51638)

In the output printed by the function `whos` there is no easy way to see immediately if a matrix is full or sparse:

>> a = 1;
>> b = sparse(1);
>> whos
Variables visible from the current scope:

variables in scope: top scope

   Attr Name        Size                     Bytes  Class
   ==== ====        ====                     =====  =====
        a           1x1                          8  double
        b           1x1                         32  double

Total is 2 elements using 40 bytes

Matlab R2021a shows the sparse attribute in a similar table:

>> a = 1;
>> b = sparse(1);
>> whos
  Name      Size            Bytes  Class     Attributes

  a         1x1                 8  double
  b         1x1                32  double    sparse

>>

It would be nice if Octave could do something similar.