On Thu, 5 Apr 2007, Michael Conklin wrote:
Not being the developer I cannot answer definitively but, as a frequent
user of SPSS files I can give you my experience.
1) The unrecognized coding is perhaps due to the locale of the SPSS
installation. I have had success reading in files from version 15 but
often encounter that error when the file was created with data that
included some foreign language. I often receive survey files that were
administered in a non-English language and that is when I usually see
the error.
That is what is surmised in this recent R-devel thread:
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-devel/2007-April/045238.html
although it may also happen in an English locale (since after all Windows
uses codepage 1252, not ASCII, for American 'English').
The next release of package foreign will give a warning (rather than an
error) with an unrecognized encoding and recognize a few more.
2) My experience with the "Warning - unrecognized record type" message
is that it has no effect whatsoever on the data file.
3) Others on the list have noted that you are safer exporting POR files
instead of SAV files from SPSS. Both are read by the read.spss function.
The R Data Import/Export manual recommends an open format such as .csv.
(Look like John Kane has yet to read it ....) R does have quite extensive
facilities for dealing with encodings in text files.
Hope that helps.
Michael Conklin
Chief Methodologist - Advanced Analytics
MarketTools, Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of John Kane
Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2007 7:45 PM
To: RINNER Heinrich; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [R] read.spss (package foreign) and SPSS 15.0 files
--- RINNER Heinrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
Hello,
does anyone have experience with reading SPSS
Version 15.0 files into R (version 2.4.1, WinXP)?
I have long been sucessfully reading SPSS files with
read.spss from the wonderful foreign package, but
somehow after upgrading from SPSS14 to SPSS15 I seem
to have problems.
Trying a simple example, where test.sav is a SPSS
15.0 data file consisting of x1=c(1,2,3) and
x2=c("a","b","c"), I get this:
read.spss(file = "C:\\temp\\test.sav")
Fehler in read.spss(file = "C:\\temp\\test.sav") :
error reading system-file header
Zusätzlich: Warning message:
C:\temp\test.sav: File-indicated character
representation code (Unknown) is not ASCII
version infos:
R version 2.4.1 (under WinXP)
foreign version 0.8-18
Has anyone experienced the same, and can give a
solution here (possibly other than "downgrade to
SPSS14.0" ;-))?
Regards,
Heinrich.
Heck. I'd be happy to get an answer to what is
happening here:
mac <- spss.get("H:/ONTH/Raw.data/Follow.sav")
Warning message:
H:/ONTH/Raw.data/Follow.sav: Unrecognized record type
7, subtype 16 encountered in system file
I have taken to exporting the file to a delimited
format and reading it into R since I cannot trust the
R import.
--
Brian D. Ripley, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595
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