Unexpected length of array and plotting error as a result - matlab

Question

I wanted to plot the load voltage across the resistor in series with a diode using matlab. This is a rather simple example involving piecewise functions, however I ran into an unexpected error.
t=[0:0.001:10]
vs=4*sin(pi * t)
for i =1:length(vs)
if(vs(i)<=0.7)
v(i)=0;
else
v(i)=vs(i)-0.7;
end
end
plot(t,v)
t is the time, vs is the source voltage, and v is the load voltage. Now, running this gave me an error saying "error, t and v are of different sizes..". Using length() I found out that while t and vs are of lengths 10001, v is somehow of length 1000001.
This is truly baffling to me. How can v and vs possibly differ in size? every element of vs was mapped to an element of v, and yet the size of v comes out to be about 100 times the size of vs.
Being new to matlab, I still am not very comfortable with not explicitly declaring the array v before using it in the for loop. However, I went through with it, because the example I worked on prior to this, used the same thing and it worked without any problems. We simply had a plot a piecewise function:
x=[-2 : 0.00001 : 20];
for i=1: length(x)
if(x(i)>=-2 && x(i)<0)
y(i)=sqrt(x(i)^2+1);
else if(x(i)>=0 && x(i)<10)
y(i)=3*x(i)+1;
else
y(i)=9*sin(5*x(i)-50);
end
end
end
plot(x,y)
This code worked flawlessly, and in my opinion the initial code is fundamentally doing the same thing, so again, I'm clueless as to why it failed.
The original code works if you initialise v to be of the same size as t (and therefore, vs), but still, I want to know why the code involving x,y worked (where y wasn't initialised) and the code involving (t,v) failed.
Also, my friend copy pasted the entire code into the command window of matlab 2016, and it worked. (and I'm using the 2021 version).

Answer 1

Its good practice to initialize variables before entering a loop. It will help avoid undefinied behaviour when you run the script multiple times. If you run the script with different lengths for t, it would fail the second run. One solution would be:
t=0:0.001:10;
vs=4*sin(pi * t);
v=nan(size(t));
for i =1:length(vs)
if(vs(i)<=0.7)
v(i)=0;
else
v(i)=vs(i)-0.7;
end
end
figure;
plot(t,v);
You could also avoid the for loop and use matrix operations instead:
t=0:0.001:10;
vs=4*sin(pi * t);
v=vs-0.7;
v(vs<=0.7)=0;
figure;
plot(t,v);