Testing class functions interactively

[Ian Xu]

I am creating a class in Mata and want to test the class functions interactively in Stata. How do I go about doing this? I tried looking for this in the Mata Book and was unable to find any guidance on this.

[Joseph Coveney]

I am creating a class in Mata and want to test the class functions interactively in Stata. How do I go about doing this?

After you've created the class definition, open an interactive session of Mata, and instantiate an object of the class. Then you can call public methods on it.

I illustrate below.

version 19

clear *

mata:
mata set matastrict on

class Probe {
    private:
        string scalar msg
    public:
        void setMe(), report()
}
void function Probe::setMe(string scalar msg) {
    this.msg = msg
    printf("All set!\n")
}
void function Probe::report() printf("I've been set as: %10s\n", msg)

end

* In an interactive session, instantiate an object of the class

mata

p = Probe() // <= Here

// Then you can test public methods like this:

p.setMe("interactive test")

p.report()

end

exit