How to add 0 in a column to form an array in which all columns are with equal rows?

I have 8 txt files, containing 2 columns each file. However each column has a different number of rows.

This way, how can I join these 16 columns into just one file and insert 0 at the end of each column so that they all have the same row size as my largest column???.

thank you!

Answer 1

[Kevin Phung]

here is an example:

a = [1 2 3]';
b = [1 2]';
c = [1 2 3 4 5 6 7]';
sets = {a,b,c};  % let a, b, and c be your column sets. Store them in an array 'sets'
max_size = 0;
%figure out the maximum size
for i = 1:numel(sets)
    if size(sets{i},1) > max_size 
        max_size = size(sets{i},1); % set max size, if current column is greater than the current max size
    end
end
% append zeros if smaller than the max size
for i = 1:numel(sets)
    if size(sets{i},1) < max_size
        sets{i} = vertcat(sets{i},zeros(max_size-size(sets{i},1),1)); 
    end
end
sets = cell2mat(sets) %concatenate into a matrix