Find where condition is true n times consecutively - arrays

Question

I have an array (say of 1s and 0s) and I want to find the index, i, for the first location where 1 appears n times in a row.
For example,
x = [0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0] ;
i = 5, for n = 3, as this is the first time '1' appears three times in a row.
Note: I want to find where 1 appears n times in a row so
i = find(x,n,'first');
is incorrect as this would give me the index of the first n 1s.
It is essentially a string search? eg findstr but with a vector.

Answer 1

You can do it with convolution as follows:
x = [0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0];
N = 3;
result = find(conv(x, ones(1,N), 'valid')==N, 1)
How it works
Convolve x with a vector of N ones and find the first time the result equals N. Convolution is computed with the 'valid' flag to avoid edge effects and thus obtain the correct value for the index.

Answer 2

Another answer that I have is to generate a buffer matrix where each row of this matrix is a neighbourhood of overlapping n elements of the array. Once you create this, index into your array and find the first row that has all 1s:
x = [0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0]; %// Example data
n = 3; %// How many times we look for duplication
%// Solution
ind = bsxfun(#plus, (1:numel(x)-n+1).', 0:n-1); %'
out = find(all(x(ind),2), 1);
The first line is a bit tricky. We use bsxfun to generate a matrix of size m x n where m is the total number of overlapping neighbourhoods while n is the size of the window you are searching for. This generates a matrix where the first row is enumerated from 1 to n, the second row is enumerated from 2 to n+1, up until the very end which is from numel(x)-n+1 to numel(x). Given n = 3, we have:
>> ind
ind =
1 2 3
2 3 4
3 4 5
4 5 6
5 6 7
6 7 8
7 8 9
8 9 10
These are indices which we will use to index into our array x, and for your example it generates the following buffer matrix when we directly index into x:
>> x = [0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0];
>> x(ind)
ans =
0 0 1
0 1 0
1 0 1
0 1 1
1 1 1
1 1 0
1 0 0
0 0 0
Each row is an overlapping neighbourhood of n elements. We finally end by searching for the first row that gives us all 1s. This is done by using all and searching over every row independently with the 2 as the second parameter. all produces true if every element in a row is non-zero, or 1 in our case. We then combine with find to determine the first non-zero location that satisfies this constraint... and so:
>> out = find(all(x(ind), 2), 1)
out =
5
This tells us that the fifth location of x is where the beginning of this duplication occurs n times.

Answer 3

Based on Rayryeng's approach you can loop this as well. This will definitely be slower for short array sizes, but for very large array sizes this doesn't calculate every possibility, but stops as soon as the first match is found and thus will be faster. You could even use an if statement based on the initial array length to choose whether to use the bsxfun or the for loop. Note also that for loops are rather fast since the latest MATLAB engine update.
x = [0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0]; %// Example data
n = 3; %// How many times we look for duplication
for idx = 1:numel(x)-n
if all(x(idx:idx+n-1))
break
end
end
Additionally, this can be used to find the a first occurrences:
x = [0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 0]; %// Example data
n = 3; %// How many times we look for duplication
a = 2; %// number of desired matches
collect(1,a)=0; %// initialise output
kk = 1; %// initialise counter
for idx = 1:numel(x)-n
if all(x(idx:idx+n-1))
collect(kk) = idx;
if kk == a
break
end
kk = kk+1;
end
end
Which does the same but shuts down after a matches have been found. Again, this approach is only useful if your array is large.
Seeing you commented whether you can find the last occurrence: yes. Same trick as before, just run the loop backwards:
for idx = numel(x)-n:-1:1
if all(x(idx:idx+n-1))
break
end
end

Answer 4

One possibility with looping:
i = 0;
n = 3;
for idx = n : length(x)
idx_true = 1;
for sub_idx = (idx - n + 1) : idx
idx_true = idx_true & (x(sub_idx));
end
if(idx_true)
i = idx - n + 1;
break
end
end
if (i == 0)
disp('No index found.')
else
disp(i)
end