Element by Element Subtraction

I am trying to do element by element subtraction like the following:

a= [1,2,3,4,5] b= [-1,-2,-3]

I would like my output to be "a" to be subtracted by the first element of "b" then by the second element and so on. The output "c" should look like: c=[2,3,4,5,6,3,4,5,6,7...]

I understand that if I simply do "c=a-b" will not work because the dimensions do not agree. Would something like this require a loop?

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

Try this:

a= [1,2,3,4,5] 
b= [-1,-2,-3]
c = a' - b;
c = c(:)'

You get

c =
   2     3     4     5     6     3     4     5     6     7     4     5     6     7     8

in R2016b (I believe) or later that has automatic expansion capability.

[Image Analyst]

If you need/want it in one line of code instead of 2, you can use

c = reshape(a' - b, 1, [])

If that doesn't work for you because you have an old version of MATLAB, let me know.

[anuforo peter]

What about doing this on a mutidimensional array

[anuforo peter]

Please help! Thank you ?

Answer 2

[Kaushik Lakshminarasimhan]

minus operator in Matlab can inherently handle this, so you don't need a loop. Checkout >> help minus. For your case, something like this will work.

a= [1,2,3,4,5]; b= [-1,-2,-3];
c = reshape(a'-b,1,numel(a)*numel(b));