'length' extension for multiple input arguments?

[Thomas Treichl]

Søren Hauberg schrieb:
> Hi All
> 
> If I have a cell array, and I want to know the length of all elements of
> this array, it seems I, essentially, have to do something like
> 
>   for k = 1:length (cell_array)
>     lengths (k) = length (cell_array {k});
>   endfor
> 
> Would an extension to the 'length' function be acceptable that allowed
> for multiple input arguments? This would simply implement the above loop
> and return a vector of integers instead of just an integer. So,
> 
>   length ("hello", 7)
> 
> would return [5, 1]. Such an extension would allow me to write
> 
>   lengths = length (cell_array {:});
> 
> which I think is quite easy to read. Anyway, would such a change be
> acceptable?

You could also use cellfun instead, if I understand you correctly.
But this is just a tip making things faster and doesn't really answer
your question if a modification to length() can be made...

octave-3.1.51+:1> A = {"hello", 7, "hello world"};
octave-3.1.51+:2> B = cellfun (@(x) length (x), A, "UniformOutput", true)
B =
     5   1    11
octave-3.1.51+:3> typeinfo (B)
ans = matrix

Best regards,

   Thomas