Dear all,
I am having trouble following an example from the Mata Matters section
of the recent Stata Journal 7(1). It concerns the use of subscripts on
the left of an assignment to restore a vector to it's original order
using a permutation vector.
Here is some example code that restores a vector to its original order:
/* 1 */
mata
mata clear
y = (7\1\6\5)
p = order(y,1)
newy = y[p]
y[p] = newy
y
end
So y starts and finishes as,
: y
1
+-----+
1 | 7 |
2 | 1 |
3 | 6 |
4 | 5 |
+-----+
In the article the following code on p112 is also claimed to work:
/* 2 */
mata
mata clear
y = (7\1\6\5)
p = order(y,1)
y = y[p]
y[p] = y
y
end
However y finishes as,
: y
1
+-----+
1 | 1 |
2 | 1 |
3 | 6 |
4 | 1 |
+-----+
which is clearly not how it started.
Is Mata (incorrectly?) processing subscripts on the left of an
assignment on an element by element basis, the following code suggests
this is possible.
/* 3 */
mata
mata clear
y = (7\1\6\5)
p = order(y,1)
y = y[p]
for (i=1; i<=rows(y); i++) {
y[p[i]] = y[i]
}
y
end
As an aside I note that if only y is to be referred to, then the
following code restores the sort order of y:
/* 4 */
mata
mata clear
y = (7\1\6\5)
p = order(y,1)
y = y[p]
y = y[invorder(p)]
y
end
Is Mata behaving incorrectly in code example 2 or is this my
misunderstanding?
I am using Intercooled Stata 9.2 for Windows, Born 17 May 2006.
Thanks in advance for any help,
Tom Palmer
PhD student
University of Leicester
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