I see. I wasn't thinking about a table join where a string variable wouldn't be affected. (Are we 100% certain that the string variable wouldn't ever be affected? I don't commonly use table joins...)
I think it would be helpful for the programmers to have some short syntax examples that illustrate what we're expecting. As an example, of a short syntax example, this is from the SPSS manual for vector (I believe there are examples in the PSPP manual as well): * Replace a case's missing values with the mean of all nonmissing values for that case. DATA LIST FREE /V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8. MISSING VALUES V1 TO V8 (99). COMPUTE MEANSUB=MEAN(V1 TO V8). VECTOR V=V1 TO V8. LOOP #I=1 TO 8. + DO IF MISSING (V(#I)). + COMPUTE V(#I)=MEANSUB. + END IF. END LOOP. BEGIN DATA 1 99 2 3 5 6 7 8 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 2 3 5 5 6 7 8 99 END DATA. LIST. -Alan On 3/26/2015 7:47 AM, Frans Houweling wrote: > OK maybe I confuse width and content. > In the case of numeric variables, if I MATCH with a table file, and > both files have a var TURNOVER, I know my current TURNOVER var will be > left alone. The question whether the TURNOVER column in the table file > may have better data than the one in my workfile is a different matter > and of no interest to me here. In this case, with string variables, I > would prefer to retain just my original variable width. > But I agree that with UPDATE in the case of strings the resulting > string width could (should?) be set to the maximum width. > Friends :-)? > frans -- Alan D. Mead, Ph.D. President, Talent Algorithms Inc. science + technology = better workers +815.588.3846 (Office) +267.334.4143 (Mobile) http://www.alanmead.org Announcing the Journal of Computerized Adaptive Testing (JCAT), a peer-reviewed electronic journal designed to advance the science and practice of computerized adaptive testing: http://www.iacat.org/jcat _______________________________________________ Pspp-users mailing list Pspp-users@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pspp-users
