You should initialize rect_n1 to zeros if you're going to set the places where it's 1, and indexing in MATLAB starts with 1, so:
T = 10;
N_1 = 5;
rect_n1 = zeros(1,T);
for n=1:(N_1)
rect_n1(n)=1;
end
plot(rect_n1)
or, without the loop:
T = 10;
N_1 = 5;
rect_n1 = zeros(1,T);
rect_n1(1:N_1) = 1;
plot(rect_n1)


