Writing a for loop to run a single command for several different variables

I'm running a Gillespie Simulation and would like to execute a for loop using 'i' which takes a set of variables I give it in a matrix. Struggling to explain what I want to happen in code terminology. This is an example of the outcome I'd like:

A=[1,2]

B=[3,4]

for i = [A,B]

cat(2,i,5) (i.e I want to make 5 the next number in both A and B, so matlab would do cat(2,A,5) and cat(2,B,5)

end

This would ideally result in A=[1,2,5] and B=[1,2,5], but matlab doesn't read i=A as a variable, but as 1 and 2 then just does cat(2,1,5) and cat(2,2,5) (I think).

In the above case I could just write the cat command out twice but in the actual code doing it with a for loop will save a lot of extra work. Of course, if there is a better way to do this than with a for loop/cat comman please let me know.

Answer 1

[Jackson Burns]

Hi Tom!

I'm guessing the issue you were having is that the for loop would iterate through all the elements of both lists individually. This is because calling the for loop with [A,B] concatenates the lists. To avoid this, I wrote a function that accomplishes the task using cell arrays:

function out = append5(in)
    out = {};
    for mat = in
        out(end+1) = {[cell2mat(mat) 5]};
    end
end

Try it out like this:

a = [1 2]; b = [3 4];
entry = {a,b};
answer = append5(entry)

To then remove the result from answer, use curly braces.

mat1 = answer{1}

Good luck, hope I helped!

[Tom Halmos]

Great thanks for that!

[Jackson Burns]

You're welcome! Please accept the answer to the question if you found it helpful so that more people can find it in the future.