st: Returning a rowvector on-the-fly in Mata, as in -return(el1, el2, ...)-

[Joseph Coveney <jcoveney@bigplanet.com>]

Is is bad Mata programming practice to assemble a returned vector (or
matrix) inside the -return()- statement?

Stata won't let you -return matrix A = (element1, element2, . . .)-.  In
Mata, on the other hand, it seems that you can do the analogous operation.
But that doesn't imply that you ought to.

Is it too-clever-for-your-own-good to, for example,

   -return(element1, element2, . . .)-

    or even

   -return( (element1, element2, . . .) )-

for a function that returns a row vector?  (The elements are expressions,
i.e., literals, scalar variables, return functions, of the proper datatype.)

Joseph Coveney

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