How to impliment this without loop?

I need to take the rate of change of a variable and for the first value there is not a previous value to take.For the initial i assumed that the rate of change is zero as the simulation is so long that it will not affect the results.So i tried something like this:

obj.Value(indexT,BladeN) = function(X,Y); 
PreviousValue = obj.Value(indexT-1,BladeN)*(index~=1)+(index==1)*obj.Value(indexT,BladeN);
rate = (obj.Value(indexT,BladeN) - PreviousValue)/timestep

Ofcurse its not running cause there is no zero index.I know it can be done by a loop but I would prefer something more elegant.Any idea?

Answer 1

[Henrik]

You example is a bit confusing to me, there seems to be several unnecessary complications, e.g. using fields.

Anyway, here's what I would do:

rate=(obj.Value(2:end,BladeN)-obj.Value(1:end-1,BladeN))/timestep;

I'd even guess that this will work, depending on exactly what you need.

rate=(obj.Value(2:end,:)-obj.Value(1:end-1,:))/timestep;

If you want rate to be the same size as obj.Value, you could also do

rate=zeros(size(obj.Value));
rate(2:end,:)=(obj.Value(2:end,:)-obj.Value(1:end-1,:))/timestep;

I hope this can be used?

You can also look up diff, that might be helpful.