Function to read a SPSS por file into a data.frame().
read.por(
file,
convert.factors = TRUE,
generate.factors = TRUE,
encoding = TRUE,
fromEncoding = NULL,
use.missings = TRUE,
debug = FALSE,
override = FALSE,
convert.dates = TRUE,
add.rownames = FALSE
)string a por-file to import. can be a file on a computer or an url. in this case the file will be downloaded and read before it is used.
logical if true numeric or character variables will be converted into a factor in R.
logical function to convert variables with
partial labels into factors. e.g. 1 - low and 5 - high are provided, labels
2, 3 and 4 will be created. especially useful in combination with
use.missings=TRUE.
logical shall values be converted? If true, read.por()
will try the charcode stored inside the por-file. If this value is 2 or not
available, fromEncoding can be used to change encoding.
character encoding of the imported file. This information is stored inside the por-file, but is currently unused. Still this option can be used to define the initial encoding by hand.
logical should missing values be converted. Defaults to TRUE.
logical provides additional debug information. Most likely not useful to any user.
logical The filename provided in file is
checked for the ending por. If the file ending is different, nothing is read.
This option can be used to override this behavior.
logical Should dates be converted on the fly?
logical If TRUE, the first column will be
used as rownames. Variable will be dropped afterwards.
SPSS files are widely available, though for R long time only foreign and memisc provided functions to import por-files. Lately haven joined. This package is an approach to offer another alternative, to document the por-format and provide additional options to import the data.
Information to decrypt the por-format was provided by tda www.stat.rub.de/tda.html and pspp www.gnu.org/software/pspp/
read.spss, memisc.