Within Mata * is monadic operator. See, [M-2] Pointers
Scott
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected] [mailto:owner-
> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Jann, Ben
> Sent: Tuesday, May 24, 2005 4:35 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: Comment indicator * produces error in Mata
>
> Hi,
> it appears that the * comment indicator, which may be used at
> the beginning of a line to indicate that the line is to be
> ignored (see -help comments-), cannot be used with Mata.
> Example:
>
> : void somefunction()
> > {
> > * display("some text")
> > }
>
> : somefunction()
> some text
> somefunction(): 3257 nonpointer found where pointer
> required
> <istmt>: - function returned error
> (0 lines skipped)
>
> The error also occurs if somefunction() is defined whithin an
> ado file. Other comment indicators like // or /**/ work fine.
>
> If one really thinks hard about how the different comment
> indicators are handeled in Stata, it is not surprising that
> the * comment indicator does not work in Mata. Nonetheless,
> I think that this is bad news for people being accustomed to
> using the * comment indicator.
>
> Even more bad news is that the problem is not mentionned in the
> documentation (at least not in places where one would look for it
> such as -help comment-, [M-1] first, [M-1] ado, [U] 16.1.2, or
> [U] 18.11.2). I hope that this will change in a future update.
>
> grumble...
> ben
>
*
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