Other Data Structures :: Programming (Getting Started)

Getting Started

Other Data Structures

This section introduces you to some other data structures in MATLAB, including

Multidimensional Arrays

Multidimensional arrays in MATLAB are arrays with more than two subscripts. One way of creating a multidimensional array is by calling zeros, ones, rand, or randn with more than two arguments. For example,

```
R = randn(3,4,5);
```

creates a 3-by-4-by-5 array with a total of 3x4x5 = 60 normally distributed random elements.

A three-dimensional array might represent three-dimensional physical data, say the temperature in a room, sampled on a rectangular grid. Or it might represent a sequence of matrices, A^(k), or samples of a time-dependent matrix, A(t). In these latter cases, the (i, j)th element of the kth matrix, or the t_kth matrix, is denoted by A(i,j,k).

MATLAB and Dürer's versions of the magic square of order 4 differ by an interchange of two columns. Many different magic squares can be generated by interchanging columns. The statement

```
p = perms(1:4);
```

generates the 4! = 24 permutations of 1:4. The kth permutation is the row vector p(k,:). Then

A = magic(4);
M = zeros(4,4,24);
for k = 1:24
   M(:,:,k) = A(:,p(k,:));
end

stores the sequence of 24 magic squares in a three-dimensional array, M. The size of M is

```
size(M)

ans =
     4     4    24
```

Note The order of the matrices shown in this illustration might differ from your results. The perms function always returns all permutations of the input vector, but the order of the permutations might be different for different MATLAB versions.

The statement

```
sum(M,d)
```

computes sums by varying the dth subscript. So

```
sum(M,1)
```

is a 1-by-4-by-24 array containing 24 copies of the row vector

```
34    34    34    34
```

and

```
sum(M,2)
```

is a 4-by-1-by-24 array containing 24 copies of the column vector

```
34    
34    
34    
34
```

Finally,

```
S = sum(M,3)
```

adds the 24 matrices in the sequence. The result has size 4-by-4-by-1, so it looks like a 4-by-4 array.

S =
   204   204   204   204
   204   204   204   204
   204   204   204   204
   204   204   204   204

return Cell Arrays