spss_ascii_reader() and sas_ascii_reader() are used when you need to read an fixed-width ASCII (text) file that comes with a setup file. These file combinations are sometimes referred to as .txt+.sps, .txt+.sas, .dat+.sps, or .dat+.sas. The setup file provides instructions on how to create and name the columns, and fix the key-value pairs (sometimes called value labels). This is common in government data, particular data produced before 2010.
spss_ascii_reader( dataset_name, sps_name, value_label_fix = TRUE, real_names = TRUE, keep_columns = NULL, coerce_numeric = TRUE )
| dataset_name | Name of the ASCII (.txt) file that contains the data. This file may be zipped with a file extension of .zip. |
|---|---|
| sps_name | Name of the SPSS Setup file - should be a .sps or .txt (zipped text files also work) file. |
| value_label_fix | If TRUE, fixes value labels of the data. e.g. If a column is "sex" and has values of 0 or 1, and the setup file says 0 = male and 1 = female, it will make that change. The reader is much faster is this parameter is FALSE. |
| real_names | If TRUE fixes column names from default column name in the SPSS setup file (e.g. V1, V2) to the name is says the column is called (e.g. age, sex, etc.). |
| keep_columns | Specify which columns from the dataset you want. If NULL, will return all columns. Accepts the column number (e.g. 1:5), column name (e.g. V1, V2, etc.) or column label (e.g. VICTIM_NAME, CITY, etc.). |
| coerce_numeric | If TRUE (default) will make columns where all values can be made numeric into numeric columns.Useful as FALSE if variables have leading zeros - such as US Census FIPS codes. |
Data.frame of the data from the ASCII file
sas_ascii_reader For using an SAS setup file
Other ASCII Reader functions:
sas_ascii_reader()
# Text file is zipped to save space. dataset_name <- system.file("extdata", "example_data.zip", package = "asciiSetupReader") sps_name <- system.file("extdata", "example_setup.sps", package = "asciiSetupReader") if (FALSE) { example <- spss_ascii_reader(dataset_name = dataset_name, sps_name = sps_name) # Does not fix value labels example2 <- spss_ascii_reader(dataset_name = dataset_name, sps_name = sps_name, value_label_fix = FALSE) # Keeps original column names example3 <- spss_ascii_reader(dataset_name = dataset_name, sps_name = sps_name, real_names = FALSE) } # Only returns the first 5 columns example4 <- spss_ascii_reader(dataset_name = dataset_name, sps_name = sps_name, keep_columns = 1:5)