The easy way to go about this is to take a bit pattern with the first k bits set and shift it down n - k times, saving each shifted column vector to the result. So, starting from
1
0
0
0
Shift 1, 2, and 3 times to get
|1 0 0 0|
|0 1 0 0|
|0 0 1 0|
|0 0 0 1|
We'll use circshift to achieve this.
function A = adjcombs(n)
c = (n^2 + n)/2 + 1; % number of combinations
A = zeros(n,c); % preallocate output array
col_idx = 1; % skip the first (all-zero) column
curr_col = zeros(n,1); % column vector containing current combination
for elem_count = 1:n
curr_col(elem_count) = 1; % add another element to our combination
for shift_count = 0:(n - elem_count)
col_idx = col_idx + 1; % increment column index
% shift the current column and in