st: ifelse mata function

[Nicola Orsini <Nicola.Orsini@ki.se>]

Mata users,

do you know any mata function similar to ifelse implemented in R or  
the cond() programming function in Stata?

http://www.iiap.res.in/astrostat/School07/R/library/base/html/ifelse.html

I know I can loop across observations but it's not really fast with  
large dataset in an optimization process where this process has to be  
repeated many times.

Here is a simple example

mata
mata clear
y =  runiform(10,1)
x =  runiform(10,1)
z =  J(10,1,.)
for (i=1; i<=rows(y); i++) {
	    if (y[i]>= x[i]) z[i] = y[i]-x[i]
 	 	  else       z[i] = x[i]-y[i]
     }
y, x, z
end

Wouldn't be great to have a mata function like -ifelse-?

ifelse(y>=x, z=y-x, z=x-y)

Nicola



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