matlab too slow in creating one new variable, looking for more efficient way

I have a table called z, that looks like this:

ID Price

1        8

2        7

3        10

...

This table has over 1 million rows. I want to create a new variable in this table called "bucket", and I write

 for i = 1:height(z)

    if (z.Price(i) >=6.490 & z.PRICE(i) <=6.499)
        z.bucket(i) = 1;
    elseif (z.PRICE(i) >=6.500 & z.PRICE(i) <=6.999)
        z.bucket(i) = 2;
    elseif (z.PRICE(i) >=7.000 & z.PRICE(i) <=7.499)
        z.bucket(i) = 3;
    elseif (z.PRICE(i) >=7.500 & z.PRICE(i) <=7.999)
        z.bucket(i) = 4;
    elseif (z.PRICE(i) >=8.000 & z.PRICE(i) <=8.499)
        z.bucket(i) = 5;
    elseif (z.PRICE(i) >=8.500 & z.PRICE(i) <=8.999)
        z.bucket(i) = 6;
    elseif (z.PRICE(i) >=9.000 & z.PRICE(i) <=9.499)
        z.bucket(i) = 7;
    elseif (z.PRICE(i) >=9.500 & z.PRICE(i) <=9.990)
        z.bucket(i) = 8;
    else z.bucket(i) = 9;
    end
 end

I did not initialize bucket but went directly with the code. So the code has been running for over 3 hours now and I also get a warning at the very beginning when I start to run these codes:

Warning: The new variables being added to the table have fewer rows than the table. They have been extended with rows containing default values. > In table/subsasgnDot (line 271) In table/subsasgn (line 67)

What is a better way to do this in order to make the codes run faster? I think it's a very straightforward thing that I want to do --create a new variable based on some if/else condition. I do it a lot in R and SQL, but didn't realize Matlab would be so slow on this simple thing. Maybe I was not doing it the right way. Thanks!

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

z.Bucket = discretize(z.Price, [6.49, 6.5, 7, 7.5, 8, 8.5, 9, 9.5, 9.991, Inf])

Note that I made the last bin (9) starts at 9.991 since it's not specified in your code.