Make a general import of upper triangular matrix in MATLAB - matlab

Question

I have been trying to make a general import of Ghaul's answer to my earlier question about importing an upper triangular matrix.
Initial Data:
1.0 3.32 -7.23
1.00 0.60
1.00
A = importdata('A.txt')
A =
1.0000 3.3200 -7.2300
1.0000 0.6000 NaN
1.0000 NaN NaN
So you will have to shift the two last rows, like this:
A(2,:) = circshift(A(2,:),[0 1])
A(3,:) = circshift(A(3,:),[0 2])
A =
1.0000 3.3200 -7.2300
NaN 1.0000 0.6000
NaN NaN 1.0000
and then replace the NaNs with their symmetric counterparts:
A(isnan(A)) = A(isnan(A)')
A =
1.0000 3.3200 -7.2300
3.3200 1.0000 0.6000
-7.2300 0.6000 1.0000
I have this, so we get the complete matrix for any size:
A = importdata('A.txt')
for i = (1:size(A)-1)
A(i+1,:) = circshift(A(i+1,:),[0 i]);
end
A(isnan(A)) = A(isnan(A)');
Is this approach the best? There must be something better. I remember someone told me to try not to use for loops in MATLAB.
UPDATE
So this is the result. Is there any way to make it faster without the loop?
A = importdata('A.txt')
for i = (1:size(A)-1)
A(i+1,:) = circshift(A(i+1,:),[0 i])
end
A(isnan(A)) = 0;
A = A + triu(A, 1)';

Answer 1

Here's another general solution that should work for any size upper triangular matrix. It uses the functions ROT90, SPDIAGS, and TRIU:
>> A = [1 3.32 -7.23; 1 0.6 nan; 1 nan nan]; %# Sample matrix
>> A = spdiags(rot90(A),1-size(A,2):0); %# Shift the rows
>> A = A+triu(A,1).' %'# Mirror around the main diagonal
A =
1.0000 3.3200 -7.2300
3.3200 1.0000 0.6000
-7.2300 0.6000 1.0000

Answer 2

Here's one way without loop. If you have a more recent version of Matlab, you may want to check which solution is really faster, since loops aren't as bad as they used to be.
A = A'; %'# transpose so that linear indices get the right order
out = tril(ones(size(A))); %# create an array of indices
out(out>0) = A(~isnan(A)); %# overwrite the indices with the right number
out = out + triu(out',1); %'# fix the upper half of the array