Error "command spmatrix is unrecognized" when I was using "spmatrix spfrommata"

[Abby Kong]

Dear all,

I'm generating a spatial weighting matrix from mata and would like to create an Sp spatial matrix. I explored that " spmatrix spfrommata Wnew= W v" could copy a matrix from Mata to an Sp spatial weighting matrix.

But then an error shows: command spmatrix is unrecognized .

Then I tried "spmat spfrommata Wnew= W v" , an error shows again: spfrommata unknown subcommand

I tried to install this command but could not find the installation package. Does anyone know anything about this command? I'm using STATA 14. Thank you very much!

[William Lisowski]

Welcome to Statalist.

When I try your first command the result is as I would expect, since I have no matrices defined.

. clear all

. spmatrix spfrommata Wnew= W v
matrix W not found
r(498);

So Stata clearly recognized the command, and seems likely to have recognized the subcommand as well. What version of Stata are you running? The spmatrix command was introduced in Version 15.0.

. about

Stata/SE 15.1 for Mac (64-bit Intel)
Revision 21 Mar 2019
Copyright 1985-2017 StataCorp LLC

When I install spmat, part of the st0292 user-written package from the Stata Journal, and try your second command, I get the same result as you - not surprising, since the output of help spmat does not document spmat spfrommata as a possible subcommand. Perhaps if you review the output of help spmat you will find a subcommand that will do what you need.