[R] Getting information encoded in a SAS, SPSS or Stata command file into R.

[Ista Zahn]

Hi Andrew,

You may be able to run the SPSS syntax file using pspp
(http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/)

Best,
Ista

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:23 PM, andrewH <ahoerner at rprogress.org> wrote:
> Dear folks –
> I have a large (26 gig) ASCII flat file in fixed-width format with about 10
> million observations of roughly 400 variables.  (It is 51 years of Current
> Population Survey micro data from IPUMS, roughly half the fields for each
> record).  The file was produced by automatic process in response to a data
> request of mine.
>
> The file is not accompanied by a human-readable file giving the fieldnames
> and starting positions for each field.  Instead it comes with three command
> files that describe the file, one each for SAS SPSS, and Stata. I do not
> have ready access to any of these programs.  I understand that these files
> also include the equivalent of the levels attribute for the coded data.  I
> might be able to hand-extract the information I need from the command files,
> but this would involve days of tedious work that I am hoping to avoid.
>
> I have read through the R Data Import/Export manual 2 and the foreign
> package documentation and I do not see anything that would allow me to
> extract the necessary information from these command files. Does anyone know
> of any r package or other non-proprietary tools that would allow me to get
> this data set from its current form into any of the following formats:
> SAS, SPSS or Stata binary files read by R.
> A MySQL data base
> An ffdf object readable using the ff package.
>
> My ultimate goal is to get the data into an ffdf object so that I can
> manipulate it in R, perhaps by way of a database. In allocation I will
> probably be using no more than 20 variables at a time, probably a bit under
> a gig. I am working on a machine with three gig of ram.
>
> (I have seen some suggestions that data.table also provides a
> memory-efficient way of providing database-like functions, but I am unsure
> whether it would let me cope with an object of this size).
>
> Any help or suggestions anyone could offer would be very much appreciated.
>
> Warmest regards, andrewH
>
>
>
>
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