R help - Jul 2011 - Apostrophes in R Commander in recode

Dear colleagues, 

I'm using R64 (2.13) on Mac OS 10.6.8 and I've encountered a problem
with the recode function in Rcommander.  The application cannot deal with
apostrpohes ( ' ) do not.  I've got a factor from the 2008 Canada
Election study (highest level of schooling) and some of the values include
"Bachelor's Degree" , "Master's Degree".

I've troubleshooted (shot?) the recode function for all the levels and
it's really the apostrophe that is the problem.

When entering "Bachelor's Degree"=1, I get the error message 

[39] ERROR: Use only double-quotes (" ") in recode directives

I see also that the same problem exists in recode from the command line.

There are two ways I can solve this myself, but neither are both are a bit more
complex than the context requires (e.g. exercises for an undergraduate class). I
can use gsub from the command line to remove the apostrophes, or i can  import
the data file without using value labels as factor levels and that would
doubtless work.  But the technical documentation for the CES is very poor; my
students would have to end up opening up the original .sav file in PASW and hunt
down what the underlying factor levels refer to in that instance.

Is there a solution within R Commander?
Yours, Simon Kiss
*********************************
Simon J. Kiss, PhD
Assistant Professor, Wilfrid Laurier University
73 George Street
Brantford, Ontario, Canada
N3T 2C9
Cell: +1 905 746 7606

On Jul 29, 2011, at 11:32 AM, Simon Kiss wrote:
> Dear colleagues,
>
> I'm using R64 (2.13) on Mac OS 10.6.8 and I've encountered a
problem
> with the recode function in Rcommander.
It's probably in a package named 'car'.

library(car)
?recode
>  The application cannot deal with apostrpohes ( ' ) do not.  I've  
> got a factor from the 2008 Canada Election study (highest level of  
> schooling) and some of the values include "Bachelor's Degree"
, .
>
> I've troubleshooted (shot?) the recode function for all the levels  
> and it's really the apostrophe that is the problem.
>
> When entering , I get the error message
>
> [39] ERROR: Use only double-quotes (" ") in recode directives
Need to escape the single quote:

   x <- c("Bachelor's Degree" , "Master's
Degree")
   recode(x, ' "Bachelor\'s Degree" = 1 ; "Master\'s
Degree"= 2')
# [1] 1 2


You might also have tried:

library(foreign)
?read.spss

-- 
David.
>
> I see also that the same problem exists in recode from the command  
> line.
>
> There are two ways I can solve this myself, but neither are both are  
> a bit more complex than the context requires (e.g. exercises for an  
> undergraduate class). I can use gsub from the command line to remove  
> the apostrophes, or i can  import the data file without using value  
> labels as factor levels and that would doubtless work.  But the  
> technical documentation for the CES is very poor; my students would  
> have to end up opening up the original .sav file in PASW and hunt  
> down what the underlying factor levels refer to in that instance.
>
> Is there a solution within R Commander?

-- 

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT