Question

Is there any way to use a for-loop in MATLAB with a custom step? What I want to do is iterate over all powers of 2 lesser than a given number. The equivalent loop in C++ (for example) would be:

for (int i = 1; i < 65; i *= 2)

Note 1: This is the kind of iteration that best fits for-loops, so I’d like to not use while-loops.
Note 2: I’m actually using Octave, not MATLAB.

Answer 1

Perhaps you want something along the lines of

for i=2.^[1:6]
   disp(i)
end

Except you will need to figure out the range of exponents. This uses the fact that since
a_(i+1) = a_i*2 this can be rewritten as a_i = 2^i.

Otherwise you could do something like the following

i=1;
while i<65
   i=i*2;
   disp(i);
end