Getting codebook data into R

Or, you can do it the lazy way...

Download spss errr... pspp at http://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/ and run 
the spss code in which somebody else already figured all that out,
 to create an spss file. Then use one of the spss importing
libraries. Lately I've become partial to memisc, but there are several 
choices here.

eRic



----- Original message -----
From: "David Winsemius" <dwinsemius at comcast.net>
To: "barny" <garyb.davies at btinternet.com>
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2012 17:50:39 -0500
Subject: Re: [R] Getting codebook data into R

I've been trying to get some data from the National Survey for  
Family Growth
into R - however, the data is in a .dat file and the data I need  
doesn't
have any spaces or commas separating fields - rather you have to  
look into
the codebook and what number of digits along the line the data you  
need is.
The data I want are the following, where 1,12,int means that the  
data I'm
interested starts in column 1 and finishes in column 12 and is an  
integer.

           ('caseid', 1, 12, int),
            ('nbrnaliv', 22, 22, int),
           ('babysex', 56, 56, int),
           ('birthwgt_lb', 57, 58, int),
           ('birthwgt_oz', 59, 60, int),
           ('prglength', 275, 276, int),
           ('outcome', 277, 277, int),
           ('birthord', 278, 279, int),
           ('agepreg', 284, 287, int),
           ('finalwgt', 423, 440, float)

That's not the way the read.fwf is set up to accept data. You will  
need to loop over that input stream and apply logic like:
vec<numeric(0);
nams <-character(0)
getwidth = first-last+1
vec=c(vec, getwidth)
nams=c(nams, <whatever>)
getwidblank = last-first.next-1
If( getblank>0) namskip= <junk-name>

Then remove all the zeros and that will be  your vector of widths and  
your string of col.names

How can I do this using R? I've written a python programme which  
basically
does it but it'd be nicer if I could skip the Python bit and just do  
it
using R. Cheers for any help.


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David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT

______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.