Operate on Successive Values Without Loops

Say I have a vector of x values, and a vector of y values. I would like to write a function to calculate the distance between successive points. I know how to do this in a loop, like the snippet given below.

for i = 1:1:size(x) - 1
    distance(i) = sqrt((x(i) - x(i + 1)) ^ 2 + (y(i) - y(i + 1)) ^ 2)
end

Is there a way to do this without the loop?

Answer 1

[Kye Taylor]

Totally... first arrange your vectors as column vectors, then try

distance = sum(sqrt((x(1:end-1)-x(2:end)).^2 + (y(1:end-1)-y(2:end)).^2),2);

[David]

Great! Except for the sum(), this was exactly what I needed.

[Kye Taylor]

Haha, right... no sum :)