Perhaps more important than any of this is that
you can program whatever it is that you want.
At one stage I wanted a program to select rows
and columns from a matrix and it is accessible
as -matselrc- in the files for -dm79-. These days
I would use Mata instead, but that program, and
other things, remain accessible and
might help you write your own.
For example
STB-56 dm79 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yet more new matrix commands
(help matcorr, matewmf, matvsort, svmat2 if installed) . . N. J. Cox
7/00 pp.4--8; STB Reprints Vol 10, pp.17--23
commands to produce a correlation matrix, elementwise monadic
function of another matrix, selected subsets of matrix rows
and columns, vec or vech of a matrix, elements sorted within
a vector, matrix from a vector, and commands to save matrices
STB-50 dm69 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Further new matrix commands
(help matdelrc, matewm, matmad, matpow if installed) . . . N. J. Cox
7/99 pp.5--9; STB Reprints Vol 9, pp.29--34
collection of new matrix commands providing additional matrix
checking, management, element-wise operators, maximum absolute
difference, and power
STB-39 dm49 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Some new matrix commands
(help matfunc, varfunc if installed) . . . . . . . . . . . J. Weesie
9/97 pp.17--20; STB Reprints Vol 7, pp.43--48
collection of new matrix commands; several for explicit matrices
and a few for implicit matrices (i.e., variables)
However, the minimal syntax would have to be
what is your matrix
what do you want to omit
and my guess is that whatever you wrote would be no
easier to use -- and less flexible -- than existing commands.
Nick
[email protected]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Nick Cox
> Sent: 09 March 2007 15:19
> To: '[email protected]'
> Subject: RE: st: RE: Utility to reduce vector length by a given number
> of elements
>
>
> It can be done in one line too:
>
> mat a = a[1, 1 .. `=colsof(a) - 5']
>
> There is a slippery slope here. First, once
> you know that you can do things like that above,
> you realise you don't need a specific extra function.
>
> In principle, the idea that there should be
> a function to solve each problem sounds good,
> but who decides what counts as a problem
> and who ends up dealing with the consequences?
>
> For example, a language with 1000 functions isn't
> necessarily better than one with 100 functions. It could
> just become 10 times more difficult to document, to
> read and to learn.
>
> In any case, there may be other solutions; it's just
> that I have not thought of them.
>
> Nick
> [email protected]
>
> Rachel
>
> > Thanks Nick, this works. I was hoping for a one step command
> > (analagous to the functionality for strings in your -renvars-
> > command) that did not involve computing the length, but apparently
> > this doesn't exist.
> >
> > On 3/8/07, Nick Cox <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > You may not know the length, but Stata does, so
> > > does this suit?
> > >
> > > . matrix a = (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10)
> > >
> > > . mat list a
> > >
> > > a[1,10]
> > > c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 c6 c7 c8 c9 c10
> > > r1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
> > >
> > > . local last = colsof(a) - 5
> > >
> > > . matrix a = a[1, 1..`last']
> > >
> > > . mat list a
> > >
> > > a[1,5]
> > > c1 c2 c3 c4 c5
> > > r1 1 2 3 4 5
> > >
> > >
> > > Nick
> > > [email protected]
> > >
> > > Rachel
> > >
> > > > Is there a Stata (rather than Mata) utility that will
> > remove the last
> > > > n elements of a vector? Is there some way of doing this without
> > > > explicitly without knowing (or evaluating) the length of
> > the vector?
>
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