Element-wise Complex Magnitude Calculation

I have an array of complex numbers (here is a snippet):

1273 + 1513i

1271 + 1481i

1256 + 1432i

1240 + 1347i

1210 + 1183i

1190 + 1029i

1169 + 870i

1156 + 714i

I'm aware the abs() function returns the complex magnitude of the vector from the origin 0,0 for each element in the vector, however is it possible to calculate the complex magnitude in an element-wise manner such that the returned value is the absolute length of all the elements in the complex vector with each previous element being treated as the origin rather than 0,0?

[Torsten]

abs( z(2:n) - z(1:n-1) )

[Gee]

Thank you so much!

[Bruno Luong]

or

abs(diff(z))

Answer 1

[Raj]

Why don't you just put it in a loop like this:

A = rand(5,1) + i*rand(5,1); % Assume this is your array
B=zeros(length(A),1);
B(1,1)=abs(A(1));
for ii=2: length(A)
B(ii,1)=abs(A(ii)-A(ii-1));
end

B is the matrix you need.

P.S.: There may be better way of doing this also.

[Guillaume]

"P.S.: There may be better way of doing this also."

As shown by Bruno, the whole lot can be replaced by

B = abs(diff(B);

You never need a loop to calculate the difference between consecutive elements in matlab.

[Raj]

@Guillaume Yes i got it. Thanks. I was preoccupied in something and was not thinking straight.