matrix get min values of a matrix before max values occurred - matlab

Question

I was trying to get the min values of a matrix before the max values of the matrix occurred. I have two matrices: matrix data and matrix a. Matrix a is a subset of matrix data and is composed of the max values of matrix data. I have the following code but obviously doing something wrong.
edit:
Matrix a are the max values of matrix data. I derived it from:
for x=1:size(data,1)
a(x)=max(data(x,:));
end
a=a'
clear x
matrix b code:
for x=1:size(data,1)
b(x)=min(data(x,(x<data==a)));
end
b=b'
clear x
matrix data matrix a matrix b
1 2 3 4 4 1
6 5 4 7 7 4
9 6 12 5 12 6
I need all the min values that occurred before to matrix a occurred in matrix data

Answer 1

Short and simple:
[a,idxmax] = max(data,[],2);
b = arrayfun(#(ii) min(data(ii,1:idxmax(ii))), 1:size(data,1));
which is the same as
b=NaN(1,size(data,1)); % preallocation!
for ii=1:size(data,1)
b(ii) = min(data(ii,1:idxmax(ii)));
end
Ignore maximum itself
If you want minimum of everything really before (and not including the maximum), it's possible that the maximum is the first number, and you try taking minimum of an empty matrix. Solution then is to use cell output, which can be empty:
b = arrayfun(#(ii) min(data(ii,1:idxmax(ii)-1)), 1:size(data,1),'uni',false);
Replace empty cells with NaN
If you want to replace empty cells to Nan and then back to a matrix use this:
b(cellfun(#isempty,b))={NaN};
b=cell2mat(b);
or simply use the earlier version and replace b(ii) with NaN when it is equal to a(ii) same outcome:
b = arrayfun(#(ii) min(data(ii,1:idxmax(ii))), 1:size(data,1));
b(b'==a) = NaN
Example:
data=magic(4)
16 2 3 13
5 11 10 8
9 7 6 12
4 14 15 1
outputs:
a' = 16 11 12 15
b =
16 5 6 4
and
b =[1x0 double] [5] [6] [4]
for the 2nd solution using cell output and ignoring the maximum itself also.
And btw:
for x=1:size(data,1)
a(x)=max(data(x,:));
end
a=a'
clear x
can be replaced with
a=max(data,[],2);

Answer 2

It's not pretty but this is the only way I found so far of doing this kind of thing without a loop.
If loops are ok I would recommend Gunther Struyf answer as the most compact use of matlab's in-built array looping function, arrayfun.
Some of the transposition etc may be superfluous if you're wanting column mins instead of row...
[mx, imx] = max(data');
inds = repmat(1:size(data,2), [size(data,1),1]);
imx2 = repmat(imx', [1, size(data,2)]);
data2 = data;
data2(inds >= imx2) = inf;
min(data2');
NOTE: if data is not needed we can remove the additional data2 variable, and reduce the line count.
So to demonstrate what this does, (and see if I understood the question correctly):
for input
>> data = [1,3,-1; 5,2,1]
I get minima:
>> min(data2')
ans = [1, inf]
I.e. it only found the min values before the max values for each row, and anything else was set to inf.
In words:
For each row get index of maximum
Generate matrix of column indices
Use repmat to generate a matrix, same size as data where each row is index of maximum
Set data to infinity where column index > max_index matrix
find min as usual.