Re: st: Mata void functions and pointers

["Brian P. Poi" <bpoi@stata.com>]

On 05/17/2012 04:52 PM, Matthew Baker wrote:
> Brendan (and others):
>
> I should have been more clear! I would certainly prefer to use a
> vector to collect the elements, but the objects I'm collecting are of
> unknown dimension which is not known in advance, so perhaps I should
> have used an example like:
>
> /* Begin example */
> clear all
> mata
> void example(A,B,Ab) Ab=J(A+round(3*runiform(1,1)),B,1)
> P=J(3,1,NULL)
> for (i=1;i<=3;i++) {
> 	example(i,i,Ab=.)
> 	Ab
> 	P[i]=&Ab
> 				   }
>
> /* display results */
>
> for (i=1;i<=3;i++) *P[i]
> end
> /* end example */
>
> I have thought about trying to readjust the dimensions of the vector
> every time it is a little different, but this seems kind of clumsy and
> I was hoping for a better alternative.
>
> Thanks again!
>
> Matt Baker

Matt,

Here is one solution where I took the liberty of writing a second function that returns a matrix based on the third argument of your example() function:

clear all
mata

void example(A,B,Ab) Ab=J(A+round(3*runiform(1,1)),B,1)

real matrix e2(real scalar A, real scalar B)
{
	real matrix Ab
	example(A,B,Ab)
	return(Ab)
}

void main()
{
	pointer(real matrix) rowvector P
	P = J(3,1,NULL)
	for(i=1;i<=3;++i) {
		P[i] = &(e2(i,i))
	}
	
	for(i=1; i<=3; ++i) {
		P[i]
		*P[i]
	}
}

main()

end


   -- Brian Poi
   -- bpoi@stata.com


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