Note, though, that if you go even further beyond the recommended
behaviour and use ++i more than once within the same expression, then i
does not remain constant in relation to the entire expression, e.g.
: i=1
: (i, ++i, ++i, i, i++)
1 2 3 4 5
+---------------------+
1 | 2 2 3 3 3 |
+---------------------+
: i
4
Yet more reason for the admonishment to be stronger, I think, as I would
have expected to get either (3,3,3,3,3) - given the mata documentation -
or (1,2,3,3,3) - naively - from doing this.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of William
Gould, Stata
Sent: 15 May 2006 14:45
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: st: Help needed to understand behavior of Mata's
increment/decrement
Joseph Coveney <[email protected]> came up with a cute Mata
expression,
(i, ++i, i, i++, i)
I'm recommend against ever coding anything like that, but Joseph
explains that he concocted it just to explore the operators' behavior,
and he's puzzled by the result. Joseph writes,
> Mata's documentation (in "[M-2] op_increment -- Increment and
> decrement
> operators") says that increment and decrement operators are performed
> in relation to the "entire expression." I don't understand why the
> first and second elements of -myrowvector = (i, i, ++i, i, i++, i)-
> don't come out the same as the first element of -myrowvector = (i,
++i, i, i++, i)-.
Just so you can see what Joseph is talking about, here's the output:
: i = 1
: (i, ++i, i, i++, i)
1 2 3 4 5
+---------------------+
1 | 2 2 2 2 2 |
+---------------------+
: i
3
The operator worked as advertized. The expression is (i, ++i, i, i++,
i), which is to say, the entire thing. Before the expression, Mata
executed
++i, and i went from being 1 to 2. After the expression, Mata
++incremented
i again, and i went from being 2 to 3. During the expression, i
remained constant.
Joesph's confusion is because he is thinking of (i, ++i, i, i++, i) as
being a list of expressions, the list separated by commas. Not true.
Comma is an operator; (a,b,c) is a single expression just as is (a+b+c).
Actually, the example Joesph gave was
myrowvector = (i, i, ++i, i, i++, i)
and given what I just said, Joseph now probably thinks of this as being
two expressions, -myrowvector- on the left, and -(i, i, ++i, i, i++, i)-
on the right. Not true. Equal is an operator, and the above is one
expression (a=b=c is a single expression just as is a+b+c). In Mata,
you can code things like
x = y = z[i=(i++)+1]
In his posting, Joesph said
> The op_increment documentation does admonish, "and many programmers
> feel that i++ or ++i should never be coded in a line that has a second
> reference to i, before or after."
Thus, the following is bad style,
y[i] = x[i++]
because i and i++ are being used in the SAME EXPRESSION.
Forget the rule and think about,
y[i] = x[++i]
What would you expect to happen? Are you sure?
The manual says "many programmers feel". In most languages that allow
++ and --, the admonishment is stronger, warning that the result is
undefined. What they mean is that they won't tell you what it does,
because it is too complicated, and anyway, they want the freedom to
change what it does. We should have done the same thing. We were too
proud about how nicely we had isolated the ++ and -- operators.
If you repeat Joseph's experiment with structure elements (e.g., p.i and
p.i++), you will obtain different results! It turned out that, with
++p.i and p.i++, we could not be fast and move the reference all the way
to the front or end of the expression, so the incrementation moves just
a little, far enough to do the right thing if you follow the
admonishment, which now needs to be stronger.
-- Bill
[email protected]
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