How to extract non-vertical column from matrix in Matlab

Question

I have matrix A and a vector b, which specifies column index of the element to be extracted for each corresponding row of the matrix.

For example,

A = [         


        

Answer 1

As an alternative to @dantswain's solution, you can go to the linear indices directly, assuming you're always selecting from the columns:

r = size(A,1);
A( (1:r).' + (b-1) * r)

This will be faster, but not necessarily clearer.

Unfortunately, there isn't an elegant solution.