I came into matrix world from loop world(C, etc)

I would like to call a function on each individual member of a vector/matrix, and return the resulting vector/matrix.

This is how I currently do it:

function retval = gauss(v, a, b, c)
  for i = 1:length(v)
    retval(i) = a*(e^(-(v(i)-b)*(v(i)-b)/(2*c*c)));
  endfor
endfunction

Example usage:

octave:47> d=[1:1000];
octave:48> mycurve=gauss(d, 1, 500, 100);

Now, all advice on Matlab/Octave says: STOP whenever you catch yourself using loops and think of a better way of doing it.

Thus, my question: Can one call a function on each member of a vector/matrix and return the result in a new vector/matrix all at once without using explicit loops?

That is I am looking for something like this:

 function retval = newfun(v)
    retval = 42*(v^23); 
endfunction

Perhaps, it is just syntactic sugar, that is all, but still would be useful to know.