[R] read.spss Error reading system-file header

[Jacob Wegelin]

Is there any documentation on what kind of SPSS file can and cannot be
read by read.spss?  Alternatively, how can one modify or "clean" an SPSS
file to make it readable by read.spss?  What properties must a *.sav file
before read.spss can read it?

The file in this example is 270KB, with 5 rows and 173 columns.  I have no
trouble reading larger files with read.spss, so it's not merely a size
problem. I have no difficulty opening the file in SPSS.  I also have no
trouble getting read.spss to read a dummy SPSS file with 5 rows and 173
columns, where each entry was randomly sampled from c(letters, LETTERS).

> library("foreign")
> junk<-read.spss("indata/z2EXvideo.sav")
Error in read.spss("indata/z2EXvideo.sav") :
        Error reading system-file header.
In addition: Warning message:
indata/z2EXvideo.sav: File layout code has unexpected value 50331648.  Value should be 2, in big-endian or little-endian format.

Thanks for any information

Jake Wegelin

> version
         _
platform i386-pc-mingw32
arch     i386
os       mingw32
system   i386, mingw32
status
major    1
minor    8.0
year     2003
month    10
day      08
language R