String variables from a run

tda_strings returns the string variables a run printed with pdata, as a named list of character vectors.

Usage

tda_strings(res, trim = TRUE)

Arguments

res

a run, as returned by tda_run.

trim

trim the fixed-width padding (default TRUE).

Value

A named list of character vectors, one per string variable, or an empty list if the run printed none.

Details

TDA stores strings fixed-width, so every value is padded to the variable's declared length; the padding is trimmed here, since it is storage rather than data. The values come through the export channel rather than being re-read from the printed file: a string cannot travel on the numeric channel, and parsing it back out of fixed-width text is exactly what the exports exist to avoid.

A character or factor column in a data frame becomes a TDA string variable (see tda_write_data), and rspss and rstata create them from the file's string columns. Those are the only ways TDA makes one.

See also

Other data: tda_read_spss(), tda_read_xls()

Examples

d <- data.frame(ID = 1:3, S = c("pear", "fig", "date"),
                X = c(1.5, 2.5, 3.5))
r <- tda_run(c(tda_nvar(d), "pdata() = out.txt;"), data = d)
tda_strings(r)
#> $S
#> [1] "pear" "fig"  "date"
#>