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Re: how to sum lists of unequal length?

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg70421] Re: how to sum lists of unequal length?
  • From: Peter Pein <petsie at dordos.net>
  • Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 02:34:15 -0400 (EDT)
  • References: <egq2th$84h$1@smc.vnet.net>

Arkadiusz.Majka at gmail.com schrieb:
> Hi all,
> 
> I have lists of unknown and unequal lengths. I want to sum them, e.g
> 
> {a1,a2,a3}+{b1,b2,b3,b4,b5} and obtain result
> {a1+b1,a2+b2,a3+b3,b4,b5}. Simply filling by zeros of the shorter list
> is impossible because I have no idea how many zeros I have to pad.
> 
> Please, help
> 
> Arek
> 

Hi Arek,

 you don't need to have an idea, because Mathematica can easily estimate the
maximal length of the lists to sum:

In[1]:= (* generate 3 Lists of length 3, 7 and 5 resp. *)
myLists=Inner[Map[#1,Range[#2]]&,{a,b,c},{3,7,5},List]

Out[1]=
{{a[1],a[2],a[3]},
 {b[1],b[2],b[3],b[4],b[5],b[6],b[7]},
 {c[1],c[2],c[3],c[4],c[5]}}

and this determines the maximal length, pads an appropriate number of zeros to
the shorter lists and adds them:

In[2]:=
Total[PadRight[#,Max[Length/@myLists]]&/@myLists]

Out[2]=
{a[1]+b[1]+c[1],a[2]+b[2]+c[2],a[3]+b[3]+c[3],b[4]+c[4],b[5]+c[5],b[6],b[7]}

Easy, isn't it? :-)

Greetings,
Peter


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