How Logical Arrays Are Used :: Data Types (Programming)

Programming

How Logical Arrays Are Used

MATLAB has two primary uses for logical arrays:

Most mathematics operations are not supported on logical values.

Using Logicals in Conditional Statements

Conditional statements are useful when you want to execute a block of code only when a certain condition is met. For example, the sprintf command shown below is valid only if str is a nonempty string. The statement

```
if ~isempty(str) && ischar(str)
```

checks for this condition and allows the sprintf to execute only if it is true:

str = 'Hello';

if ~isempty(str) && ischar(str)
   sprintf('Input string is ''%s''', str)
   end

ans =
   Input string is 'Hello'

Using Logicals in Array Indexing

MATLAB supports a type of array indexing that uses one array as the index into another array. For example, array B below indexes into elements 1, 3, 6, 7, and 10 of array A:

A = 5:5:50
A =
     5    10    15    20    25    30    35    40    45    50
B = [1 3 6 7 10];

A(B)
ans =
     5    15    30    35    50

In this case, the numeric values of array B designate the intended elements of A.

Another type of array index, a logical index, designates the elements of A based on their position in the indexing array, B. In this masking type of operation, every true element in the indexing array is treated as a positional index into the array being accessed.

Logical Indexing Example 1. This next example creates logical array B that satisfies the condition A > 0.5, and uses the positions of ones in B to index into A. This is called logical indexing:

A = rand(5);
B = A > 0.5;

A(B) = 0
A =
    0.2920    0.3567    0.1133         0    0.0595
         0    0.4983         0    0.2009    0.0890
    0.3358    0.4344         0    0.2731    0.2713
         0         0         0         0    0.4091
    0.0534         0         0         0    0.4740

A simpler way to express this is

```
A(A > 0.5) = 0
```

Logical Indexing Example 2. The next example highlights the location of the prime numbers in a magic square using logical indexing to set the nonprimes to 0:

A = magic(4)
A =
    16     2     3    13
     5    11    10     8
     9     7     6    12
     4    14    15     1

B = isprime(A)
B =
     0     1     1     1
     1     1     0     0
     0     1     0     0
     0     0     0     0

A(~B) = 0;                       % Logical indexing

A
A =
     0     2     3    13
     5    11     0     0
     0     7     0     0
     0     0     0     0

Creating a Logical Array Identifying Logical Arrays