title: How to get Exponent of Scientific Notation in Matlab
body: <p>When the numbers are really small, Matlab automatically shows them formatted in Scientific Notation.</p>
  
  <p>Example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>A = rand(3) / 10000000000000000;
  
  A =
  
    1.0e-016 *
  
      0.6340    0.1077    0.6477
      0.3012    0.7984    0.0551
      0.5830    0.8751    0.9386
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is there some in-built function which returns the exponent? Something like: <code>getExponent(A) = -16</code>?</p>
  
  <p>I know this is sort of a stupid question, but I need to check hundreds of matrices and I can't seem to figure it out.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you for your help.</p>