From tlumley at u.washington.edu  Wed Oct 12 16:31:56 2005
From: tlumley at u.washington.edu (Thomas Lumley)
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 07:31:56 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: [Rd] SPSS I/O dll  was:  8 char labels in read.spss
In-Reply-To: <434D17E8.1000307@biostatistic.de>
References: <434B89CB.70209@biostatistic.de>
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	<434D17E8.1000307@biostatistic.de>
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.63a.0510120727230.22756@homer22.u.washington.edu>

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Knut Krueger wrote:
> Thomas Lumley schrieb:
>> On Tue, 11 Oct 2005, Knut Krueger wrote:
>>> I found a definition of the SPSS files.
>>> http://www.wotsit.org/download.asp?f=spssdata
>>> but they recommend to use the spss input/output dll to ensure upward
>>> compatbility
>>>
>> "Well, they would say that, wouldn't they" (Rice-Davis 1963)
>>
>> Unfortunately, that document is an old file format. It doesn't describe
>> record 7 subtype 13, which is where the long variable names live.
>>
> What about using the SPSS input dll for those R users which would like to use their old SPSS files. Most universities here have SPSS licences and therefor the dll is available.
> I did not found yet any copyright notice on the developer part of the SPSS CD. Maybe the DLL is usable with the own program without the SPSS Licence. I will look for that if using the I/O dll is possible with R.
> All necessary C codes are delivered with the developer kit on the SPSS CD.
>

Yes, but it can't be incorporated in the  "foreign" package, which has a 
GPL license, and in any case wouldn't work off Windows.  It's not clear 
that it would be much easier than using the PSPP code in any case.

 	-thomas



[Rd] SPSS I/O dll was: 8 char labels in read.spss
Thomas Lumley