[Discuss-gnuradio] Getting Started Help (MATLAB like vector indexing) [GNU Radio Companion]

Hello SDR community,

I need some guidance into how vector manipulation works in GNU radio companion.

Suppose I have the following MATLAB/Octave code:

Nf          = 128;                     

Nt          = 2^10;  

F           = zeros(Nt/2+1,1); 

idxs        = (1:round(Nt/Nf)/2:Nt/2)+1

phi         = 2*pi*rand(Nf,1);  

F(idxs,:)   = sqrt(Nt)*exp(1i*phi);       

% can't figure out how to manipulate elements of F (vector object in GRC)

What would be the most efficient (development time) way of implementing this? I have spent a couple of hours in GRC messing with vector blocks and I still can't find ways to manipulate indexes of vectors. 

Should I make a bare-bones template in GRC and add my own numpy code to get around block limitations?

I feel like GRC was designed with streaming in mind. Vector and matrix manipulation seems really limited with GUI blocks unless I am missing something. Do most people write python code directly for non-streaming situations?

Thank you for your time,

Ali