re: st: passing a function name as an argument to another function in Mata

[Christopher Baum <kit.baum@bc.edu>]

<>
 
I'm trying to write a function that receives name of another function as an argument and executes it.


Section 14.4 of ITSP, Passing a function to a Mata function, discusses that.  In the call,

mata: aggreg2("‘varlist’", "‘newvar’", ‘per’, "‘op’", &‘trfn’(), "‘touse’")

where local trfn is the function name (in this case it can handle several, as the user specifies)  and then in the header for aggreg2,
the argument shows up as

pointer(real scalar function) scalar f,

and is invoked within the Mata function as

v1t = (*f)(v1)

in order to transform colvector v1 into v1t. 

Note that you cannot pass the name of a builtin function, but you probably don't want to do that anyway. 

Kit

Kit Baum   |   Boston College Economics & DIW Berlin   |   http://ideas.repec.org/e/pba1.html
                              An Introduction to Stata Programming  |   http://www.stata-press.com/books/isp.html
   An Introduction to Modern Econometrics Using Stata  |   http://www.stata-press.com/books/imeus.html




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