# Subtracting two lists of unequal length?

Posted 4 months ago
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 Hello everyone,Broadly, I am trying to subtract two lists of unequal length. More specifically, I am hoping to find a way to determine which list has the least number of elements (N) and subsequently find the absolute difference between the first N elements of the two lists. For instance, imagine t1 has 3 elements {0, 1, 2} and list t2 has 4 elements {0, 1, 2, 3}. I am hoping to do something like the following: Abs[t1 - t2] = Abs[{0,1,2} - {0,1,2}] = {0,0,0}. Is there an efficient way to do this?Thank you,Alex Attachments:
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Posted 4 months ago
 Hi Alex,Here is one way using the example from the attached notebook t1 = {0, 5, 4, 6, 7} t2 = {0, 1, 3} Abs[Subtract @@ PadRight[{t2, t1}]][[;; Min[Length@t1, Length@t2]]] (* {0, 4, 1} *) The order does not matter Abs[Subtract @@ PadRight[{t1, t2}]][[;; Min[Length@t1, Length@t2]]] (* {0, 4, 1} *) I have not done any timing to see how efficient it is. How long are the lists you are working with?
Posted 4 months ago
 This is such a cool way to do it; wish I had thought of that! Thank you so much! And, the lists vary from about 8-15 elements, so I think this will work great.Alex
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