st: RE: Re: "eval" in Mata?

[Sun Yutao <yutao.sun.statalist@outlook.com>]

Ah,

Thanks Joseph, that's a smart way of doing this!

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu [mailto:owner-statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Coveney
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2012 5:46 AM
To: statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu
Subject: st: Re: "eval" in Mata?

Sun Yutao wrote:

I'm just wondering if there is an "eval()" function in Mata. It should take a string and execute that as if it was actual Mata command.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure how well an eval() function would fit in to the concept and purpose of Mata, but Bill Gould would be the authority on this.  If you desperately need a way of evaluating a string expression as a Mata statement inside another Mata function, then there are probably work-arounds that take advantage of Stata . . . something like that below, perhaps, which assumes that the Mata expression returns a result of some kind.  (The helper function is needed so that the global Mata variable, A, is no longer in use by the time -eval()- wants to clean up after itself.  With just a little extra Mata code, you can create and use a Stata local macro as the name of the global Mata variable if you're worried that A might already exist and be in-use elsewhere in Mata when
-eval()- is called.)

Joseph Coveney

. 
. version 11.2

. 
. clear *

. set more off

. set seed `=date("2012-10-20", "YMD")'

. local linesize `c(linesize)'

. set linesize 80

. 
. mata:
------------------------------------------------- mata (type end to exit) ------
: mata set matastrict on

: 
: transmorphic function evaluator(string scalar mata_statement) {
>         stata("mata: A = " + mata_statement)
>         external A
>         return(A)
> }

: 
: transmorphic function eval(string scalar mata_statement) {
>         transmorphic result
>         result = evaluator(mata_statement)
>         stata("mata: mata drop A")
>         return(result)
> }

: 
: void function test() {
>         string scalar test_result
>         test_result = strofreal(eval("runiform(1, 1)"))
>         printf("%14s\n", test_result)
> }

: 
: test()
      .8388072

: 
: end
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

. 
. set linesize `linesize'

. 
. exit

end of do-file


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