Im a pretty advanced Stata user, but have a simple question I cant figure
out: how does one write a *function*, i.e. a program that returns a value,
and that can be called like local y = fct(x), where x and y are numbers or
strings.
This seems it should be available somewhere in the language, yet I?ve
searched in a lot of programming explanations about Stata and never found a
way to write that. FYI, I program extensively in stata, know about r-type
vs. e-type program, and know how to store results to return to main program.
I just don?t know how to write the most simple function form.
Any idea?
Fabrice
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As others have already mentioned, there isn't much in Stata for a
user-written function for use with -generate-, because of the way Stata
vectorizes that command. But, using Stata's class programming (-help
classman-), you can create user-written functions for use on the right-hand
side of an equals sign for just about anything else, e.g., assignment to
macro variables (as in your example), scalars, matrixes, and objects and
their member variables. You can also use them in the list of arguments of
other user-written functions for evaluation during the call, or you can pass
the function itself in its container object.
Joseph Coveney
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