Attempted to access a(2); index out of bounds because numel(a)=1

if i try to make a string 111100011 into 1111, 000, 11

    function [indi] = SeparatePattern (a)
      k=1;
      for i=1:length(a)
            while strcmp(a(i),a(i+1))
                if strcmp(a(i),'0')
                      indi(1,k)='0';
                else
                      indi(1,k)='1';
                end
            end
            while a(i)~=a(i+1)
              k=k+1;
            end
      end

why i keep getting an error

Attempted to access a(2); index out of bounds because numel(a)=1?

Answer 1

[Andrei Bobrov]

a = '111100011';
indi = regexp(a,'0+|1+','match')

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

What exactly are you passing for "a" ? Are you invoking

t = SeparatePattern(111100011)

? If you are then you are passing a single decimal number (roughly one billion) to the function instead of a string. To pass a string in you would need to invoke

t = SeparatePattern('111100011')

Also take note that you loop "i" from 1 to the length of a. Consider the last iteration, when "i" has already become length(a), so a(i) is the final element in "a". Inside the "for" you have

while strcmp(a(i),a(i+1))

but if a(i) is the last element of "a", then a(i+1) is going to be past the last element of "a" and you would get exactly the kind of error you saw.