\HeaderA{read.spss}{Read an SPSS Data File}{read.spss}
\keyword{file}{read.spss}
\begin{Description}\relax
\code{read.spss} reads a file stored by the SPSS \code{save} and
\code{export} commands and returns a list.
\end{Description}
\begin{Usage}
\begin{verbatim}
read.spss(file, use.value.labels=TRUE, to.data.frame=FALSE,
          max.value.labels=Inf, trim.factor.names=FALSE)
\end{verbatim}
\end{Usage}
\begin{Arguments}
\begin{ldescription}
\item[\code{file}] character variable with the name of the file to read.
\item[\code{use.value.labels}] Convert variables with value labels into \R{}
factors with those levels?
\item[\code{to.data.frame}] return a data frame?
\item[\code{max.value.labels}] Only variables with at most this many unique
values will be converted to factors
\item[\code{trim.factor.names}] Trim trailing spaces from factor levels?
\end{ldescription}
\end{Arguments}
\begin{Details}\relax
This uses modified code from the PSPP project for reading the SPSS
formats. 

Occasionally in SPSS value labels will be added to some values of a
continuous variable (eg to distinguish different types of missing
data), and you will not want these variables converted to factors.  By
setting \code{max.val.labels} you can specify that variables with a
large number of distinct values are not converted to factors even if
they have value labels. In addition, variables will not be converted
to factors if there are non-missing values that have no value label.
The value labels are then returned in the \code{"value.labels"}
attribute of the variable.

If SPSS variable labels are present, they are returned as the
\code{"variable.labels"} attribute of the answer.

Fixed length strings (including value labels) are padded on the right
with spaces by SPSS, and so are read that way by R.   See the examples
for \code{\LinkA{sub}{sub}} for ways to remove trailing spaces in string data.
\end{Details}
\begin{Value}
A list (or data frame) with one component for each variable in the saved data set.
\end{Value}
\begin{Note}\relax
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,...

You may see warnings about the file encoding: it is possible such
files contain non-ASCII character data which need re-encoding.
The most common occurrence is Windows codepage 1252, a superset of
Latin-1.
\end{Note}
\begin{Author}\relax
Saikat DebRoy and the R Core team
\end{Author}
\begin{Examples}
\begin{ExampleCode}
## Not run: 
read.spss("datafile")
## don't convert value labels to factor levels
read.spss("datafile",use.value.labels=FALSE)
## convert value labels to factors for variables with at most
## ten distinct values.
read.spss("datafile",max.val.labels=10)
## End(Not run)
\end{ExampleCode}
\end{Examples}

