[Rd] FW: read.ssd

[BXC (Bendix Carstensen)]

Did not seem to reach Saikat DebRoy, this might be the forum.
Bendix

-----Original Message-----
From: BXC (Bendix Carstensen) 
Sent: 24. november 2008 15:00
To: 'saikat at stat.wisc.edu'; 'stvjc at channing.harvard.edu'
Subject: read.ssd

It's always annoyed me that that read.ssd crashed on datasets with long variable names, but the other day a collegue of  mine pointed out to me the SAS-option validvarname=V6, which takes care of the problem by truncating names.

So here is a first go at it which works, but lets you guess what variable the truncated names refer to (normally a minor problem). The small changes in the code are flagged with "####". Hope it makes it into read.ssd.

If you want to supply information on the long filename or even restore them, the solution is to construct a proc contents step and output the filenames along with their labels, import this dataset too and use it to restore names. This is considerably more longwinded and could presumably wait. The little example SAS-program should give the details of the SAS-code needed, but a lot of namefidgeting in R is required afterward to make it work...

Best regards,
Bendix
______________________________________________

Bendix Carstensen
Senior Statistician
Steno Diabetes Center
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bxc at steno.dk   http://www.biostat.ku.dk/~bxc

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