Re: GET DATA DELIMITED TEXT

[John Darrington]

On Sat, Jul 18, 2015 at 11:57:20AM +0200, Frans Houweling wrote:
     
     On 18/07/2015 10:04, John Darrington wrote:

     Thanks for the hint, John. My problem with that (and the same
     goes for SPSS & Excel) is that you have no control of string
     lengths: combining 2 .savs from similar spreadsheets is a
     nightmare (unless I miss something). Please allow me to take
     advantage of the occasion to repeat the request that PSPP get rid
     of the same-string-length rigidity.


It is true that ADD FILES requires string variables to have the same width.
Perhaps that could be relaxed in the future.

But I don't see that this is a big problem, unless you are dealing with huge
data files.  Since it is trivial to add a new variable of the appropriate 
length and copy the values in.


Try this for example:



data list list /s1(a30).
begin data.
"This is a long string"
"so is this one!!!!!"
end data.

save outfile='long-string.sav'.


new file.
data list list /s2(a5).
begin data.
short
vshrt
xxxx
end data.

save outfile='short-string.sav'.


NEW FILE.

GET FILE='short-string.sav'.

STRING ss(a30).

COMPUTE ss=s2.

DELETE VARIABLE s2.


ADD FILES 
        /FILE=*
        /FILE='long-string.sav'
        /RENAME=(s1=ss)
        .

LIST.


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