Here's a shorter version, combining find and accumarray
x = [ 0 9 7 0 0 0; 5 0 0 6 0 3; 0 0 0 0 0 0; 8 0 4 2 1 0 ];
%# get the row and column indices for x
[rowIdx,colIdx] = find(x);
%# with accumarray take the maximum column index for every row
v = accumarray(rowIdx,colIdx,[],@max)'
v =
3 6 0 5