I have a general question about programming Mata functions:
How should we deal with missing values?
Up to now, my strategy simply was not to allow missing values.
That is:
: void myfunction(x) {
> if (missing(x)) _error(3351)
> }
: myfunction(.)
myfunction(): 3351 argument has missing values
<istmt>: - function returned error
r(3351);
But I'm not sure if this is the right way to go.
In ado code, the convention is to use the -marksample-
command to restrict the sample to the non-missing cases.
However, as far as I can see there is no such simple way
to handle missing valus in Mata.
So, what would be a good strategy? Should we take the extra
programming effort (and also waste computer time) to deal
missing values in Mata functions? Or should it be left to
the user to get rid of missing values before applying mata
functions?
If Mata functions should allow missing values, what would
be a good programming approach?
This also raises another question I already posted some days
ago on statalist: How can we quickly select a submatrix (e.g.
all non-missing elements of a vector, all rows of a matrix
that do not contain any missing values) in Mata?
ben
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