Bill Gould <[email protected]> in answering a Mata related
question said:
> ... In the meantime, the statements and functions of Mata are
> indeed powerful, and it is useful to read about colon-operators
> and sum(). To find the first help file, type -help mata-, then
> click on [M-2], then click on op_colon. To find sum(), type
> -help mata-, click on [M-4], then on utility, then on sum().
A good way to dive into Mata is starting with -help mata- and
clicking on down from there as Bill suggests. I also want to
point out a way to get directly to the hlp file for a particular
mata function without having to guess the needed clicks starting
from -help mata-.
Stata's help system understands requests that end in parens to be
requests for help on functions, and a help request that starts
with "mata" indicates you are interested in mata. So,
help cos()
shows you the help for Stata's -cos()- function, and
help mata cos()
shows you the help for Mata's -cos()- function.
If you are looking at someone's Mata code (such as examples
posted by Bill and others in answering questions on statalist)
and want to learn more about a Mata function that they used, you
can get directly to the appropriate help as shown above.
Ken Higbee [email protected]
StataCorp 1-800-STATAPC
*
* For searches and help try:
* http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
* http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
* http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
