R help - Apr 2007 - read.spss (package foreign) and SPSS 15.0 files

Hello,

does anyone have experience with reading SPSS Version 15.0 files into R (version
2.4.1, WinXP)?

I have long been sucessfully reading SPSS files with read.spss from the
wonderful foreign package, but somehow after upgrading from SPSS14 to SPSS15 I
seem to have problems.

Trying a simple example, where test.sav is a SPSS 15.0 data file consisting of
x1=c(1,2,3) and x2=c("a","b","c"), I get
this:
> read.spss(file = "C:\\temp\\test.sav")
Fehler in read.spss(file = "C:\\temp\\test.sav") : 
        error reading system-file header
Zus?tzlich: Warning message:
C:\temp\test.sav: File-indicated character representation code (Unknown) is not
ASCII

version infos:
R version 2.4.1 (under WinXP)
foreign version 0.8-18

Has anyone experienced the same, and can give a solution here (possibly other
than "downgrade to SPSS14.0" ;-))?

Regards,
Heinrich.

--- RINNER Heinrich <HEINRICH.RINNER at tirol.gv.at>
wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> does anyone have experience with reading SPSS
> Version 15.0 files into R (version 2.4.1, WinXP)?
> 
> I have long been sucessfully reading SPSS files with
> read.spss from the wonderful foreign package, but
> somehow after upgrading from SPSS14 to SPSS15 I seem
> to have problems.
> 
> Trying a simple example, where test.sav is a SPSS
> 15.0 data file consisting of x1=c(1,2,3) and
> x2=c("a","b","c"), I get this:
> > read.spss(file = "C:\\temp\\test.sav")
> Fehler in read.spss(file = "C:\\temp\\test.sav") : 
>         error reading system-file header
> Zus?tzlich: Warning message:
> C:\temp\test.sav: File-indicated character
> representation code (Unknown) is not ASCII 
> 
> version infos:
> R version 2.4.1 (under WinXP)
> foreign version 0.8-18
> 
> Has anyone experienced the same, and can give a
> solution here (possibly other than "downgrade to
> SPSS14.0" ;-))?
> 
> Regards,
> Heinrich.
 Heck. I'd be happy to get an answer to what is
happening here:
> mac <- spss.get("H:/ONTH/Raw.data/Follow.sav")
Warning message:
H:/ONTH/Raw.data/Follow.sav: Unrecognized record type
7, subtype 16 encountered in system file

I have taken to exporting the file to a delimited
format and reading it into R since I cannot trust the
R import.