How to assign values to a MATLAB matrix on the diagonal?

Question

Suppose I have an NxN matrix A, an index vector V consisting of a subset of the numbers 1:N, and a value K, and I want to do this:

 for i = V
     A(i,i) = K         


        

Answer 1

>> tt = zeros(5,5)
tt =
     0     0     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     0
>> tt(1:6:end) = 3
tt =
     3     0     0     0     0
     0     3     0     0     0
     0     0     3     0     0
     0     0     0     3     0
     0     0     0     0     3

and more general:

>> V=[1 2 5]; N=5;
>> tt = zeros(N,N);
>> tt((N+1)*(V-1)+1) = 3
tt =
     3     0     0     0     0
     0     3     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     0
     0     0     0     0     3

This is based on the fact that matrices can be accessed as one-dimensional arrays (vectors), where the 2 indices (m,n) are replaced by a linear mapping m*N+n.