How to this SAS transport file in R?

You didn't tell us your OS.  That is a binary file, and from 
?download.file:

     mode: character.  The mode with which to write the file. Useful
           values are ?"w"?, ?"wb"? (binary), ?"a"? (append) and ?"ab"?.
           Only used for the ?"internal"? method.

Only on Windows are the binary modes different, so it looks like you
forgot mode="wb".

Dear All,

I try to read the SAS transport file in R, but it shows error. Please help!
I am using R 2.11.1

library(foreign)
download.file("http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic35387.files/demo_c.xpt","C:/Desktop/demo_c.xpt")
sasxport <- read.xport("C:/Desktop/demo_c.xpt")

Error in lookup.xport(file) : file not in SAS transfer format

[...]

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Yes, that does mean you.

Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

I've had good success with the read.xport function in the SASxport (not
foreign) package.  But couldn't you just use something like

mydata<-read.xport('http..../demo_c.xpt')

The transport file looks like it's one of the NHANES demographic files.

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-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-
project.org] On Behalf Of zhiji19
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 9:26 PM
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] How to this SAS transport file in R?


Dear All,

I try to read the SAS transport file in R, but it shows error. Please
help!
I am using R 2.11.1

library(foreign)
download.file("http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic35387.files/d
emo_c.xpt","C:/Desktop/demo_c.xpt")
sasxport <- read.xport("C:/Desktop/demo_c.xpt")

Error in lookup.xport(file) : file not in SAS transfer format

I think You need to use mode='wb' in your download statement

download.file("http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic35387.files/demo_c.xpt",
              "C:/Desktop/demo_c.xpt", mode='wb')

Hope this is helpful,

Dan

Daniel J. Nordlund
Washington State Department of Social and Health Services
Planning, Performance, and Accountability
Research and Data Analysis Division
Olympia, WA 98504-5204