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

[Thomas W Blackwell]

Jake  -

The error message and warnign message shown below say something
is wrong with this file's SPSS system-file header.  If you are
really able to open this one in SPSS, do so, change maybe a
column name or row name or two, and save it again under a
different file name.  See if  read.spss() chokes on the new
version too.

Caution - I'm just guessing, here, but it's something to try.

-  tom blackwell  -  u michigan medical school  -  ann arbor  -

On Tue, 4 Nov 2003, Jacob Wegelin wrote:

>
> 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
>
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>