[R] read.spss doesn't work anymore [more info]

[Hedderik van Rijn]

> Thanks. I've debugged a little, and it seems that the primary reason
> is that a bogus value is read for n_lines in read_documents (file
> sfm_read.c).
>
> Once this has failed, the code paints itself into a corner by checking
> whether the file was already open in sfm_read_dictionary; this test
> succeeds, but the content of the dict structure remains bogus... I
> can't reproduce your segfault, but as I said, this phenomenon is
> probably secondary to the real problem anyway.
>
> The value that is getting read for n_lines is 134217728 aka 0x8000000
> which looks like it could be intended as a special value?

I've got no idea whether it is a special value, I'm pretty sure I 
didn't select anything special myself when saving that file, a couple 
of years ago, because I also always kept the back then recommended 
"more portable" .sys files. All I know is that I never had problems 
before R 1.7.1 and that the .sav files reads correctly in SPSS 10 on 
Windows (and 9), the last SPSS for Mac OS 9 (v10?) and the new SPSS v11 
for Mac OS X.

  - Hedderik.