foreign package: unable to read S-Plus objects

Tue, Jan 17, 2023 5:21 AM

@Joe: I have S-Plus 6.0 ("Professional Edition Version 6.0.3 Release 2 for Microsoft Windows : 2001") running here and can't load them there either. Tried simdat and S-Plus apparently thinks it is a script and then you just get a garbled up mess. Tried to change it to simdat.sdd and a few other extensions, but this didn't help.

Also tried:

data.restore("simdat")

but this also didn't work:

Warning messages:
  file "simdat": incomplete last line
Problem: in reading invalid mode for data: [again a garbled mess] at line 2

Not sure how else these are supposed to be read into S-Plus (and if they are even compatible with this version, although version 6 was the current version between 2001 and 2005).

Best,
Wolfgang

-----Original Message-----
From: R-help [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Kevin Thorpe
Sent: Tuesday, 17 January, 2023 13:07
To: Joseph Voelkel
Cc: R Help Mailing List
Subject: Re: [R] foreign package: unable to read S-Plus objects

I think you may be right about the cause. From the, ?R Data Import/Export?
document I find,

Function read.S which can read binary objects produced by S-PLUS 3.x, 4.x or 2000
on (32-bit) Unix or Windows (and can read them on a different OS). This is able
to read many but not all S objects: in particular it can read vectors, matrices
and data frames and lists containing those.

This suggests that the binary objects you have cannot be read by this function.
The next two paragraphs read,

Function data.restore reads S-PLUS data dumps (created by data.dump) with the
same restrictions (except that dumps from the Alpha platform can also be read).
It should be possible to read data dumps from S-PLUS 5.x and later written with
data.dump(oldStyle=T).

If you have access to S-PLUS, it is usually more reliable to dump the object(s)
in S-PLUS and source the dump file in R. For S-PLUS 5.x and later you may need to
use dump(..., oldStyle=T), and to read in very large objects it may be preferable
to use the dump file as a batch script rather than use the source function.

I think this means that if you had dumped versions of the files you could read
them back with data.restore() or source().

On Jan 16, 2023, at 5:22 PM, Joseph Voelkel <jgvcqa at rit.edu> wrote:

[You don't often get email from jgvcqa at rit.edu. Learn why this is important at

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Dear foreign maintainers and others,

I am trying to import a number of S-Plus objects into R. The only way I see how

to do this is by using the foreign package.

However, when I try to do this I receive an error message. A snippet of code

and the error message follows:

read.S(file.path(Spath, "nrand"))
Error in read.S(file.path(Spath, "nrand")) : not an S object

I no longer know the version of S-Plus in which these objects were created. I

do know that I have printed documentation, dated July 2001, from S-Plus 6; and
that all S-Plus objects were created in the 9/2004 -- 5/2005 range.

I am afraid that I simply have S-Plus objects that are not the S version 3

files that the foreign package can read, yes? But I am still hoping that it may
be possible to read these in.

I am not attaching some sample S-Plus objects to this email, because I  believe

they will be stripped away as binary files. However, a sample of these files may
be found at

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wFVa972ciP44Ob2YVWfqk8SGIodzAXPv?usp=shar
ing  (simdat is the largest file, at 469 KB)

Thank you for any assistance you may provide.

R 4.2.2
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.22000.1455]
foreign_0.8-83

Joe Voelkel
Professor Emeritus
RIT

foreign package: unable to read S-Plus objects

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