Indexing portions of a vector with array

Hi,

I currently have a vector a that is 12 x1. I want to index it such that I get the following vector q = [a(4:7),a(4:7)]. I can create an array [4 4] and [7 7], when I try to index a([4 4], [7 7]). I only get q = a(4:7). Can someone help me with the correct syntax here? Is this even possible with this sort of indexing ?

Sample input:

a = [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12];

Sample output:

q = [a(4:7),a(4:7)] = [4 5 6 7 4 5 6 7]

The size of a can vary and the index 4:7 can vary

Thank you.

[JESUS DAVID ARIZA ROYETH]

Could you put examples with desired inputs and outputs please?

[Mohammed Kagalwala]

Added in!

[Jeremy]

What exactly is the problem? The code you provided appears to do what you are asking for

[Mohammed Kagalwala]

I want to perform this action in general where all I'm given is an array of start indecies and an array of stop indecies. In the example, provided above this would [4 4], [7 7]. This could be of size N. I want to create q using these two arrays, WITHOUT using for loops.

Answer 1

[Jeremy]

I had to think about this for a while, but I think that this accomplishes the task you are looking for

a = 1:12;
id_start = [4 4]';
id_stop = [7 7]';
c = arrayfun(@colon,id_start,id_stop,'UniformOutput',false);
d = cell2mat(c);
p = reshape(d',[1 numel(d)]);
q = a(p);

[Mohammed Kagalwala]

Thanks ! Works just as I described. Though I did a timing test against a for-loop which showed the for-loop was the faster method. I'm curious if there's a way to beat a for-loops speed.

[Jeremy]

I think arrayfun is, in general, not great if you are looking to optimize efficiency. But you asked for no loops and I wanted to solve the puzzle - I wasn't able to get the colon operator to work on the array of start and stop indices without it. Maybe there is another way...