Re: using results of pspp, error report

[John Darrington]

On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 07:17:23AM -0700, Gene Shackman wrote:
     Hi all
     
     I'm writing an article about free statistical software for Citizendium
     http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Free_statistical_software
     
     I include pspp, but wanted to ask a few questions.
     
     1. I'm not entirely sure whether pspp is being written by one
     person or by a group.

It was started by one person (Ben Pfaff) but others have joined the
effort.  The AUTHORS file gives a reasonably good idea of who wrote
what.

     2. When I import a csv file, actually this file
     PD_data_cia.csv
     listed here
     http://gsociology.icaap.org/methods/comparing_freestaprograms_missing.html
     
     I get a bunch of messages reported, like this
     "/home/computername/documents/temp/workdirectory/PD_data_cia.csv:2:data 
file warning: (columns 191-190, F field) Number followed by garbage"
     
     but if I run, say, means, I seem to get the correct answer.  Is
     there somewhere in a manual or help file I can figure out what
     error reports or messages mean?

This seems to be caused by stray ^M characters at the end of each line
in that .csv file.  Some operating systems append those onto the end
of lines for some reason, but it's not common on posix compliant
systems.

The version of pspp in the master repository seems to cope with these 
extraneous characters ok, but the stable version, like you say, gives
these warnings. 
     
     3. When I do run some analysis, like descriptives, I get an
     output window, but I can't seem to do anything with the output. 
     I can't save it, I can't copy and paste it.  All I can do is look
     at it.  Am I missing something obvious? 

No, you're not missing anything.  Currently the GUI is somewhat
limited in what it allows you to do with the output. But if you want
to cut-n-paste it, you'll find the output in a file called
"psppire.txt" in your current directory (on Windows it's in some other
directory I think).  Most people just open it in gedit or some other
editor and do with it what they want from there.

Hopefully, some future version will have better output handling.

Thanks for your interest.

J'

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