I have a variable pth which is a cell array of dimension 1xn where n is a user input. Each of the elements in pth is itself a cell array and length(pth{k}) for k=1:n is variable (result of another function). Each element pth{k}{kk} where k=1:n and kk=1:length(pth{k}) is a 1D vector of integers/node numbers of again variable length. So to summarise, I have a variable number of variable-length vectors organised in a avriable number of cell arrays.
I would like to try and find all possible intersections when you take a vector at random from pth{1}, pth{2}, {pth{3}, etc... There are various functions on the File Exchange that seem to do that, for example this one or this one. The problem I have is you need to call the function this way:
mintersect(v1,v2,v3,...)
and I can't write all the inputs in the general case because I don't know explicitly how many there are (this would be n above). Ideally, I would like to do some thing like this;
mintersect(pth{1}{1},pth{2}{1},pth{3}{1},...,pth{n}{1})
mintersect(pth{1}{1},pth{2}{2},pth{3}{1},...,pth{n}{1})
mintersect(pth{1}{1},pth{2}{3},pth{3}{1},...,pth{n}{1})
etc...
mintersect(pth{1}{1},pth{2}{length(pth{2})},pth{3}{1},...,pth{n}{1})
mintersect(pth{1}{1},pth{2}{1},pth{3}{2},...,pth{n}{1})
etc...
keep going through all the possible combinations, but I can't write this in code. This function from the File Exchange looks like a good way to find all possible combinations but again I have the same problem with the function call with the variable number of inputs:
allcomb(1:length(pth{1}),1:length(pth{2}),...,1:length(pth{n}))
Does anybody know how to work around this issue of function calls with variable number of input arguments when you can't physically specify all the input arguments because their number is variable? This applies equally to MATLAB and Octave, hence the two tags. Any other suggestion on how to find all possible combinations/intersections when taking a vector at random from each pth{k} welcome!
EDIT 27/05/20
Thanks to Mad Physicist's answer, I have ended up using the following which works:
disp('Computing intersections for all possible paths...')
grids = cellfun(@(x) 1:numel(x), pth, 'UniformOutput', false);
idx = cell(1, numel(pth));
[idx{:}] = ndgrid(grids{:});
idx = cellfun(@(x) x(:), idx, 'UniformOutput', false);
idx = cat(2, idx{:});
valid_comb = [];
k = 1;
for ii = idx'
indices = reshape(num2cell(ii), size(pth));
selection = cellfun(@(p,k) p{k}, pth, indices, 'UniformOutput', false);
if my_intersect(selection{:})
valid_comb = [valid_comb k];
endif
k = k+1;
end
My own version is similar but uses a for loop instead of the comma-separated list:
disp('Computing intersections for all possible paths...')
grids = cellfun(@(x) 1:numel(x), pth, 'UniformOutput', false);
idx = cell(1, numel(pth));
[idx{:}] = ndgrid(grids{:});
idx = cellfun(@(x) x(:), idx, 'UniformOutput', false);
idx = cat(2, idx{:});
[n_comb,~] = size(idx);
temp = cell(n_pipes,1);
valid_comb = [];
k = 1;
for k = 1:n_comb
for kk = 1:n_pipes
temp{kk} = pth{kk}{idx(k,kk)};
end
if my_intersect(temp{:})
valid_comb = [valid_comb k];
end
end
In both cases, valid_comb has the indices of the valid combinations, which I can then retrieve using something like:
valid_idx = idx(valid_comb(1),:);
for k = 1:n_pipes
pth{k}{valid_idx(k)} % do something with this
end
When I benchmarked the two approaches with some sample data (pth being 4x1 and the 4 elements of pth being 2x1, 9x1, 8x1 and 69x1), I got the following results:
>> benchmark
Elapsed time is 51.9075 seconds.
valid_comb = 7112
Elapsed time is 66.6693 seconds.
valid_comb = 7112
So Mad Physicist's approach was about 15s faster.
I also misunderstood what mintersect did, which isn't what I wanted. I wanted to find a combination where no element present in two or more vectors, so I ended writing my version of mintersect:
function valid_comb = my_intersect(varargin)
% Returns true if a valid combination i.e. no combination of any 2 vectors
% have any elements in common
comb_idx = combnk(1:nargin,2);
[nr,nc] = size(comb_idx);
valid_comb = true;
k = 1;
% Use a while loop so that as soon as an intersection is found, the execution stops
while valid_comb && (k<=nr)
temp = intersect(varargin{comb_idx(k,1)},varargin{comb_idx(k,2)});
valid_comb = isempty(temp) && valid_comb;
k = k+1;
end
end
