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

[Prof Brian Ripley]

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Baize, Harold wrote:

> 
> Bj?rn Stollenwerk <b.stollenwerk at gmx.de> wrote:
> 
> > I had and still have got the same problem. There were two columns in the 
> > data frame which contain just missing values. When I deleted those the 
> > impord seemed to work, but there is still a warning message.
> 
> > Warning message:
> > C:\test.sav: Unrecognized record type 7, subtype 13 encountered in 
> > system file.
>
> This warning message has been discussed a few times. It occurs when
> read.spss reads a file from SPSS 12.0 or higher. Beginning with SPSS 12
> the file format was changed to accommodate long variable names. It seems
> logical that SPSS added a record to their file format to hold the long
> variable names, while keeping the short (eight character) variable names
> to be compatible with older versions. The read.spss function has not
> been updated. It reads the short names, ignores the long names, and
> produces the warning you cite. There does not seem to be any error in
> reading the data, other than the warning and continued use of short
> variable names. I brought this up more than a year ago, just after SPSS
> 12 was released. I e-mailed the author (Saikat DebRoy) of the read.spss
> function, but did not get a response, I don't know if he got the
> message. It would be nice to update the function to read the longer
> variable names and be rid of the warning.

Please send your patch to the maintainer (R-core, not Saikat DebRoy, if
you read the DESCRIPTION file).  (If you were not offering to do this,
please don't volunteer other people to do work for you.)

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595