Re: st: modifications to egen to handle multiple variables

[Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com>]

My suggestion (again) is that you would gain essentially nothing over  
using loops to call -egen- multiple times, something that can be done  
without pain.

Nick

On 25 Jul 2012, at 16:58, Pradipto Banerjee <pradipto.banerjee@adainvestments.com 
> wrote:

> I'm interested to define a new "generic" version of egen, called  
> egenmult that can, if used as, for instance:
>
> . bysort var1 var2: egenmult {varx1 varx2 varx3} = myfunc(vara  
> {varb1 varb2 varb3}), myoptions({vary1 vary2 vary3} varz)
>
> then Stata can interpret/replace the items within the "{" and "}"  
> above as:
>
> . bysort var1 var2: egen varx1 = myfunc(vara varb1), myoptions(vary1  
> varz)
>
> . bysort var1 var2: egen varx2 = myfunc(vara varb2), myoptions(vary2  
> varz)
>
> . bysort var1 var2: egen varx3 = myfunc(vara varb3), myoptions(vary3  
> varz)
>
>
> This question is related to my earlier post: http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-07/msg00732.html 
>  . I had checked the source code for -rowsort-, -rowranks-, as was  
> suggested in the response, but to my understanding, I would need to  
> write a new program for every function where I want a multiple  
> variable return feature.
>
> On the other hand, there is an extensive list of functions already  
> available for -egen- / -egenmore-, and it might be just nice to have  
> an -egenmult- program described above that can handle any "generic"  
> functions already available for -egen-.
>
> Would it be possible to offer suggestions on how to achieve the  
> above, i.e. how can one program the above
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