Message-ID: <3.0.6.32.20050909184746.007c8100@pop.gmx.net>
Date: 2005-09-09T16:47:46Z
From: Heinz Tuechler
Subject: change in read.spss, package foreign?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.63a.0509090845050.619@homer23.u.washington.edu>
Dear Thomas,
Thanks a lot for your extensive answer.
Heinz
At 08:53 09.09.2005 -0700, Thomas Lumley wrote:
>On Fri, 9 Sep 2005, Heinz Tuechler wrote:
>> Dear Martin,
>> Thank you for your answer. As I said, I appreciate this change. The
>> documentation does not explain precisely, how variables with labels are
>> treated now. It only tells "If SPSS value labels are converted to factors
>> the underlying numerical codes will not in general be the same as the SPSS
>> numerical values, since the numerical codes in R are always 1,2,3,...".
>> Will now the created factor levels in any case be ordered according to the
>> order of the original numerical codes in SPSS?
>
>We don't know. We think so, based on a reasonable amount of
>experimentation, but the file format isn't documented. We do know that
>the numerical codes R uses will always be 1,2,3,... so that there is no
>hope for having the same codes as SPSS unless the SPSS codes were also
>1,2,3...
>
>> In general I wonder, how I could get to know such critical changes before I
>> update a package instead of finding it out by chance. Is there a place,
>> where a responsible R-user should look, when updating the program?
>
>Many packages have a NEWS or ChangeLog file describing changes. You would
>typically have to look at the source package to find them, since by Unix
>tradition they are usually in the top-level directory and so are not
>included in the binary build.
>
>The foreign package is on svn.r-project.org, so you can see its Changelog
>there. There have been suggestions to extract these files and put them in
>the CRAN listing, but one obstacle is the lack of standardisation.
>
> -thomas
>
>