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MATLAB®
to GAUSS®
Translator
Written by Hang Qian
Iowa State University
Introduction
Welcome to the MATLAB
to GAUSS
Translator, a program that help you convert your MATLAB codes
into
GAUSS codes. MATLAB and GAUSS have many similarities in grammar,
which permit a literal translation
from one to the other. Analogous to translation between two
human languages, the program cannot
generate perfect GAUSS codes. A natural question is: what is the
accuracy rate? Surprisingly, conditional on
correct original MATLAB codes, the quality of translation is
negatively correlated with the quality of your
MATLAB codes. Imagine the complexity of translating a famous
English poem into Spanish, we will recognize
the challenge of translating beautiful Matlab codes with clever
matrix manipulation into GAUSS language. A
wild guess of the conversion accuracy for most MATLAB codes is
about 80%. It inevitably leaves some errors
and omissions for the user.
Usage
First, make sure your MATLAB file is free of grammatical error.
At least all brackets are balanced.
Next, copy and paste your MATLAB file into the current
folder.
Then there are a number of ways to proceed.
1) Type setup in the MATLAB command window, and enter your file
name in the graphic interface.
2) Double click setup.m and press F5, and enter your file
name in the graphic interface.
3) Call MAT2GAS() function with your file name as the input
argument.
Then the MATLAB to GAUSS Translator will translate the codes and
generate a new file with the same name
except for the extension “.gas”
Limitations
It is just a derivative of my MATLAB
to R translator and the capability of GAUSS translation is weak.
In the
future, the program can be improved when the author has more
spare time and resources.
Extension
You can enhance the power of the MATLAB to GAUSS Translator by
adding new rules. New rules can be
mostly easily added in EXTENSION0.m, EXTENSION1.m and
EXTENSION2.m.EXTENSION0.m allows you to translate a MATLAB
expression into GAUSS expression. Essentially, it is just a
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find and replace. For example you can replace eps in MATLAB
with .Machine$double.eps in R.
whole word find and replace.
EXTENSION1.m allows you to translate a single-output
MATLAB function into GAUSS expressions (not
necessarily functions). First, you provide a MATLAB function
name, and be sure to add a left bracket, say
reshape(. Since the order of input arguments of reshape is
well-defined in MATLAB, you do not need to
provide more information. Second, you write the translated GAUSS
codes. For example, the counterpart of
length(A) in GAUSS is rows(A) or cols(A). So you
vectorize it and write cols(vec(arg{1})), where arg{1}, arg{2},
arg{3} stands for ordered arguments in the MATLAB function.
Note that the translated GAUSS codes are not
necessarily an GAUSS function. It can be some GAUSS scripts, but
arg{1}, arg{2}, arg{3} should appear in it.
Essentially, what the program does is to replace arg{1}, arg{2},
arg{3} with the arguments appears in
user-supplied MATLAB codes.
EXTENSION2.m allows you to translate a double-output
MATLAB function into GAUSS expressions. For
example, [V,D] = sort(A) can be translated as V=sort(A);
D=sortindc(A). So you provide the MATLAB function
name sort(, and the translated codes sort(arg{1}) and
sortindc(arg{1}).
You can test the effects of your list by directly calling
EXTENSION0.m, EXTENSION1 or EXTENSION2 without
invoking the MATLAB
to GAUSS Translator main program.
Conclusion
Machine translation between MATLAB and GAUSS is similar to the
translation of language between two
counties. Literal translation may yield unexpected results. This
reminds me of a story. When I studied
English in the middle school, I was taught how to translate the
word lettuce to my mother tone. I thought it
is a vegetable similar to gait broccoli stalks/stems without
crowns. I felt puzzled how it could be an
ingredient of salads. Not until I came here and shopped a
grocery store did I realize the meaning of
lettuce –
completely different from my previous belief. In the same vein,
do not blindly trust the GAUSS codes
generated by the MATLAB to GAUSS Translator.
Contact information
Written by Hang Qian, Iowa State University
Contact me: [email protected] econometrics routines and
pedagogical economics software are available at
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hqi/
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hqi/http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hqi/http://www.public.iastate.edu/~hqi/
