How to insert elements in a vector at regular intervals in Matlab - matlab

Question

I have a vector of 13 entities in Matlab.
a=[3 4 6 8 1 5 8 9 3 7 3 6 2]
I want to append values [1 2 3 4 5] at regular intervals at position 1 5 9 13 & 17.
The final value of a looks like this.
a=[1 3 4 6 2 8 1 5 3 8 9 3 4 7 3 6 5 2].
The values with italics show the appended values.
How can I do it?

Answer 1

Since you are looking for regular intervals, you can take advantage of the reshape and cat function:
a = [3 4 6 8 1 5 8 9 3 7 3 6 2];
v = [1 2 3 4 5];
l = [1 5 9 13 17];
interval = l(2)-l(1)-1; %computes the interval between inserts
amax = ceil(size(a,2)/interval) * interval; %calculating maximum size for zero padding
a(amax) = 0; %zero padding to allow `reshape`
b = reshape (a,[interval,size(v,2)]); %reshape into matrix
result = reshape(vertcat (v,b), [1,(size(b,1)+1)*size(b,2)]); %insert the values into the right position and convert back into vector
%remove padded zeros
final = result(result ~= 0) %remove the zero padding.
>>final =
Columns 1 through 16
1 3 4 6 2 8 1 5 3 8 9 3 4 7 3 6
Columns 17 through 18
5 2

Answer 2

Here's an approach using boolean-indexing -
% Inputs
a = [3 4 6 8 1 5 8 9 3 7 3 6 2]
append_vals = [1 2 3 4 5]
append_interval = 4 % Starting at 1st index
% Find out indices of regular intervals where new elements are to be inserted.
% This should create that array [1,5,9,13,17]
N_total = numel(a) + numel(append_vals)
append_idx = find(rem(0:N_total-1,append_interval)==0)
% Get boolean array with 1s at inserting indices, 0s elsewhere
append_mask = ismember(1:N_total,append_idx)
% Setup output array and insert new and old elements
out = zeros(1,N_total)
out(~append_mask) = a
out(append_mask) = append_vals
Alternatively, we can also use linear-indexing and avoid creating append_mask, like so -
% Setup output array and insert new and old elements
out = zeros(1,N_total)
out(append_idx) = append_vals
out(setdiff(1:numel(out),append_idx)) = a

Answer 3

a=[3 4 6 8 1 5 8 9 3 7 3 6 2]; % // Your original values
pos = [1 5 9 13 17]; % // The position of the values you want to insert
b=[1 2 3 4 5]; % // The values you want to insert
% // Pre-allocate a vector with the total size to hold the resulting values
r = zeros(size(a,2)+size(pos,2),1);
r(pos) = b % // Insert the appended values into the resulting vector first
r3 = r.' <1 % // Find the indices of the original values. These will be zero in the variable r but 1 in r3
ans =
0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1
ind= find(r3==1) % // Find the indices of the original values
ind =
2 3 4 6 7 8 10 11 12 14 15 16 18
r(ind) = a; % // Insert those into the resulting vector.
r.'
ans =
1 3 4 6 2 8 1 5 3 8 9 3 4 7 3 6 5 2

Answer 4

You can use this function to append a bunch of values to an existing vector, given their positions in the new vector:
function r=append_interval(a,v,p)
% a - vector with initial values
% v - vector containing values to be inserted
% p - positions for values in v
lv=numel(v); % number of elements in v vector
la=numel(a); % number of elements in a vector
column_a=iscolumn(a); % check if a is a column- or row- wise vector
tot_elements=la+lv;
% size of r is tha max between the total number of elements in the two vectors and the higher positin in vector p (in this case missing positions in a are filled with zeros)
lr=max([max(p) tot_elements]);
% initialize r as nan vector
r=zeros(column_a*(lr-1)+1,~column_a*(lr-1)+1)/0;
% set elements in p position to the corresponding values in v
r(p)=v;
% copy values in a in the remaining positions and fill with zeros missing entries (if any)
tot_missing_values=lr-tot_elements;
if(tot_missing_values)
remaining_values=cat(2-iscolumn(a),a,zeros(column_a*(tot_missing_values-1)+1,~column_a*(tot_missing_values-1)+1));
else
remaining_values=a;
end
% insert values
r(isnan(r))=remaining_values;
You can use row-wise or column-wise vectors; the orientation of r will be the same of that of a.
Input:
a =
3 4 6 8 1 5 8 9 3 7 3 6 2
v =
1 2 3 4 5
p =
1 5 9 13 17
Output:
>> append_interval(a,v,p)
ans =
1 3 4 6 2 8 1 5 3 8 9 3 4 7 3 6 5 2
Every sequence of positive positions is allowed and the function will pad for you with zeros the final vector, in case you indicate a position exceding the sum of the original vector and added items.
For example, if:
v3 =
1 2 3 4 5 6 90
p3 =
1 5 9 13 17 30 33
you get:
append_interval(a,v3,p3)
ans =
Columns 1 through 19
1 3 4 6 2 8 1 5 3 8 9 3 4 7 3 6 5 2 0
Columns 20 through 33
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 90
Hope this will help.