Function arguments defined "on the fly"

[John Mullahy]

This may be well known to Mata veterans but I stumbled upon this earlier today and thought I'd share. I'm not sure how useful this would be in batch programming (maybe it saves one line of code) but it could be a time saver in interactive Mata (which is where I stumbled on it).

mata

rseed(2345)

round(y=runiform(1,3),.01)
round(y,.01)
y

x=2
exp(z=3*x+5)
exp(z)

end

Results:

:
: rseed(2345)

:
: round(y=runiform(1,3),.01)
         1     2     3
    +-------------------+
  1 |  .28   .14   .17  |
    +-------------------+

: round(y,.01)
         1     2     3
    +-------------------+
  1 |  .28   .14   .17  |
    +-------------------+

: y
                 1             2             3
    +-------------------------------------------+
  1 |  .2763897781   .1392858568   .1685803268  |
    +-------------------------------------------+

:
: x=2

: exp(z=3*x+5)
  59874.14172

: exp(z)
  59874.14172