Function to read a SPSS sav file into a data.frame().
read.sav(
file,
convert.factors = TRUE,
generate.factors = TRUE,
encoding = TRUE,
fromEncoding = NULL,
use.missings = TRUE,
debug = FALSE,
override = FALSE,
convert.dates = TRUE,
add.rownames = FALSE,
pass
)string a sav-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.sav will try the charcode stored inside the sav-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 sav-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 sav. 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.
character. If encrypted sav should be imported, this is a maximum of ten character encryption key.
readspss returns a data.frame with additional attributes
row.names rownames
names colnames
datalabel datalabel
datestamp datestamp
timestamp timestamp
filelabel filelabel
class data.frame
vtype SPSS type 0 is usually a numeric/integer
disppar matrix of display parameters if available
missings a list containing information about the missing variables. if
use.missings=TRUE this Information will be used to generate missings.
haslabel list of variables that contain labels
longstring character vector of long strings if any in file
longmissing character vector of missings in longstrings if any
longlabel character vector of long labels
cflag 0 if uncompressed, 1 if compressed
endian 2 or 3 if little endian else 0
compression compression similar to cflag, somehow stored twice in the sav file
doc list containing documentation information if any
charcode encoding string most likely 2 is CP1252
encoding sometimes sav-file contain encoding as a extra string
ownEnc encoding of the R-session
doenc was the file supposed to be encoded?
autoenc was encoding applied to the file?
swapit were the bytes swapped?
totals character string of totals if any
dataview xml file how the data should be printed
extraproduct additional string provided
label list containing label value information
varmatrix a matrix with information how the data is stored
var.label variable labels
lmissings missings table if any in longstrings
SPSS files are widely available, though for R long time only foreign and memisc provided functions to import sav-files. Lately haven joined. This package is an approach to offer another alternative, to document the sav-format and provide additional options to import the data. sav-files are stored most exclusively as numerics only in compression mode are some integers stored as integers. Still they are returned as numerics.
Information to decrypt the sav-format was provided by tda www.stat.rub.de/tda.html and pspp www.gnu.org/software/pspp/
read.spss, memisc and
read_sav.
fl <- system.file("extdata", "electric.sav", package = "readspss")
dd <- read.sav(fl)