Mata Matrix Headers

[Luis Pecht]

Hi Stata gurus, I am trying to mix string and numeric matrices, in order to improve readability, adding horizontal/vertical string headers.

When I append the "header" below, it works

. mata
------------------------------------------------- mata (type end to exit) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: labels=("a","b","c","d","e")

: (labels',strofreal(diag(1..5),"%2.1f"))\("",labels)
         1     2     3     4     5     6
    +-------------------------------------+
  1 |    a   1.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0  |
  2 |    b   0.0   2.0   0.0   0.0   0.0  |
  3 |    c   0.0   0.0   3.0   0.0   0.0  |
  4 |    d   0.0   0.0   0.0   4.0   0.0  |
  5 |    e   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   5.0  |
  6 |          a     b     c     d     e  |
    +-------------------------------------+

However, when I prepend the "header", it does not work.

: ("",labels)\(labels',strofreal(diag(1..5),"%2.1f"))
[symmetric]
         1     2     3     4     5     6
    +-------------------------------------+
  1 |                                     |
  2 |    a   1.0                          |
  3 |    b   0.0   2.0                    |
  4 |    c   0.0   0.0   3.0              |
  5 |    d   0.0   0.0   0.0   4.0        |
  6 |    e   0.0   0.0   0.0   0.0   5.0  |
    +-------------------------------------+

: end

any clue? thks