Octave basics: How to assign variables from a vector

Question

Maybe I'm spoiled by Python, but does Octave allows one to assign the values of variables directly from a vector? That is, doing something like

a,b,c=[5,6,7]

will result with a=5, b=6, c=7. I have tried many combinations of writing the expression above, but no luck yet ...

Christian · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-20 13:24:42Z

6

This can be done by constructing a cell array with "{...}" and converting this to a comma separated list via "{:}":

[a b c] = {5 6 7}{:} a = 5 b = 6 c = 7

answered Jun 20, 2012 at 13:24

761 silver badge2 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

spiffy, just to complete the picture, here's how to do that starting from a vector: mat2cell([5 6 7], 1, [1, 1, 1]){:}

is it really the best way to do this in octave ??

Ulf Åkerstedt · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-09 02:07:47Z

This seems to work when you actually have a vector to deal with:

v = [5, 6, 7]; [a, b, c] = num2cell(v){:}

(Extracted from this Matlab answer.)

S. Gougeon · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-09 19:43:54Z

deal() is meant for this task, for separate input values:

>> [a,b,c] = deal(5,6,7) a = 5 b = 6 c = 7