change in read.spss, package foreign?
At 12:09 09.09.2005 +0200, Martin Maechler wrote:
"Heinz" == Heinz Tuechler <tuechler at gmx.at>
on Fri, 09 Sep 2005 01:58:29 +0200 writes:
Heinz> Dear All,
Heinz> it seems to me that the function read.spss of package
Heinz> foreign changed its behaviour regarding factors. I
Heinz> noted that in version 0.8-8 variables with value
Heinz> labels in SPSS were transformed in factors with the
Heinz> labels in alphabetic order.
Heinz> In version 0.8-10 they seem to be ordered preserving
Heinz> the order corresponding to their numerical codes in
Heinz> SPSS. However I could not find a description of this
Heinz> supposed change. Since the different behaviour seems
Heinz> to depend on the installed version of the
Heinz> foreign-package I don't know how to give a
Heinz> reproducible example. It also affects spss.get of
Heinz> the Hmisc-package, which is not surprising.
Heinz> I prefer the new behaviour and would like to know, if
Heinz> it will persist in future versions.
Yes, it was on purpose.
Note that the development of "foreign" is also on
svn.R-project.org, and you can easily get at its 'ChangeLog' :
https://svn.R-project.org/R-packages/trunk/foreign/ChangeLog
where you find the relevant entry at 2005-08-15 .
Regards,
Martin Maechler
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? 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? Thanks again, Heinz T??chler