Jan 29, 2008

Tip: Mathematica version of Maltab "Find" Function

I must say that if you work with Matlab everyday, it is really frustrated with Mathematica in some points.

Find is one of the most frequently used functions in Matlab.
Find(array>5.0): returns indices of the elements that are greater than 5.0.

In Mathematica, the corresponding function is Position

Position[array, #>5.0&] or Position[array, _>5.0] just doesn't work.

We "simple-minded" Matlab user have seldom thought about putting constraints on patterns

Then, this will do the job

Position[array, x : _ /; x > 5.0]

Position[array, x:_ /; testfunc[x]]
will do better.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can save one character as the colon is not needed, i.e. use

Position[array,x_/;x>5]

Unknown said...

Here is my take. It's important to understand so that it can be generalized.
/; is called "Condition". It returns a pattern match only if the condition (the thing after /;) evaluates to true. The part "x_" means "name the pattern Blank by x so I can refer to the matched pattern later." Blank matches any expression.

To understand conditions, see "relational and logical expressions".

So, you can extend this as follows:
Position[array, x_ /; (x > 5) && (x < 10)]
Etc.