[R] Importing SAS transport data

[Martyn Plummer]

On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 17:38 -0700, Dennis Fisher wrote:
> I have encountered a problem reading SAS transport files on both a Mac 
> (OS X) and Linux (RedHat 9), both using R2.0.1.
> 
> After loading "foreign", the command:
> read.xport("V1622101_050304.xpt")
> 
> yields:
> Error in lookup.xport(file) : File not in SAS transfer format
> 
> In Linux, I can "cat" the file.  The first few lines are:
> **COMPRESSED** **COMPRESSED** **COMPRESSED** **COMPRESSED** 
> **COMPRESSED********LIB CONTROL WIN_PRO<BC>^BWIN^@8 
> SAS8.2<BC><AB>D701DATALIB 
> ACM<BC><9B>VC30<BC><81>CC14537<BC><85>RL507<BC><87>1<BC><87>S 0  0  20 
> CHAR
> 
> In contrast, I can read.xport a different file successfully.
> That file (and others that I can import successfully) contains the 
> following first line:
> HEADER RECORD*******LIBRARY HEADER 
> RECORD!!!!!!!000000000000000000000000000000  SAS     SAS     SASLIB  
> 6.12    WIN_NT                          
> 21OCT02:13:30:0721OCT02:13:30:07
> 
> I know little about SAS but I wonder whether the problem relates to the 
> export characteristics of different versions of SAS.  If so, it appears 
> that read.xport may not work with newer versions of SAS.  If so, is 
> there a new function to read SAS transport files?
> 
> Thanks for any possible help.

There are two transport formats for SAS.  The older one (XPORT) is an
open format ( http://support.sas.com/techsup/technote/ts140.html ).  The
newer one (CPORT) has been available since SAS version 6. It is a
proprietary format, so there is little chance of being able to read this
data into R.

NB The CPORT transpor format is in addition to, rather than a
replacement for, the XPORT format. You can still create XPORT transport
files in the latest version of SAS, so this is what you need to ask for.

Martyn