R help - Jul 2007 - reading stata files: preserving values of variables converted to factors

Hi,

I am a Stata user new to R.  I am using read.dta to read a Stata file 
that has variables with value labels.  read.dta converts them to 
factors, but seems to recode them with values from 1 to <number of 
factor levels> (looking at the output of unclass(<varname>)), so the 
original numerical values are lost.  Using convert.factors=FALSE 
preserves the values, but seems to discard the labels.  Is it possible 
to get these variables into R while preserving both the values and the 
labels?

Thanks,
Ben

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007, Ben Saylor wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am a Stata user new to R.  I am using read.dta to read a Stata file
> that has variables with value labels.  read.dta converts them to
> factors, but seems to recode them with values from 1 to <number of
> factor levels> (looking at the output of unclass(<varname>)), so
the
> original numerical values are lost.
Yes. The R factor type should not be used if you want the original levels. 
It is not a 'labelled numeric' type and the numbers are an
implementation
detail.
>  Using convert.factors=FALSE
> preserves the values, but seems to discard the labels.
It doesn't discard the labels. They are kept in the attributes of the data 
frame.

 	-thomas