Nancy, I haven't run in to this problem and I cannot tell you exactly step-by-step what to do, but I can explain what's going on and give you some advice.
Incompatible encodings implies that the files have encodings that are not all the same and the warning is that you could be surprised by the results of combining them. I think if you converted to a common encoding (like UTF-8), this problem would go away. Encodings are the tables that relate numeric data to characters. For example, the character 1 is ASCII 49 and a space is 32, so if your ASCII data file has '1 1' that's represented by bytes 49, 32, 49. ASCII only defines 127 characters that include some invisible codes and the characters on your keyboard. UTF-8 uses the same 127 characters (so the first 127 characters overlap) and then UTF-8 provides many more to represent many different characters. There are many other encodings, like Latin-1/ISO 8859-1. If you use a different encoding, the meaning of the numeric values of your file changes and could potentially surprise you. For example, when people copy from a Word document and paste into something expecting ASCII, the smartquotes get pasted as three random (strange) characters. Encodings are also particularly a problem for any data that uses any language other than English. For example, I recently analyzed some data where the survey responses included "em dashes" (which is like a hyphen, but longer; the character is not part of the ASCII set). I had to use a program to convert to UTF-8 and add a BOM so that SPSS would read the data properly. A BOM is a sequence of three characters at the beginning of the file that tells compatible software the encoding of a file. If you don't have a BOM, you need to tell the software. PSPP provides an encoding subcommand on get: https://www.gnu.org/software/pspp/manual/html_node/GET.html If you think this seems confusing, I think it is fairly confusing, but the fundamental issue is that computers were originally designed to handle a subset of English language characters and then had to be extended to handle the multitude of other characters needed by all the world's languages and data. If your data are in exotic encodings, you may need to learn more about this. Otherwise, UTF-8 is likely to be sufficient. It may even be possible to convert to ASCII. The link below is to an answer that purports to show you how to detect and control the encoding of files on Windows using Notepad. I prefer a more powerful (free, open-source) editor called Notepad++, but I'm not sure it's any better in detecting and controlling encodings. Again, I think if you can probably save all three files as "UTF-8", possibly including a BOM, this error will go away. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3710374/get-encoding-of-a-file-in-windows -Alan On 10/7/2019 5:35 PM, nancy.cot...@i5oconsulting.com wrote: > > I am trying to merge 3 files, I have read what post on the server but they > are not very helpful. I am not a programmer and new to this application. I > use the ADD FILES but keep getting the error Warning: combining files with > incompatible encodings. String data may not be represented correctly. But I > do not see any file to see the data represented. Basically I do not have a > clue and have searched on every subject and video I can think of to see if > there are step by step instructions to fix this problem. Can you assist. > Wish there was a way I could do this thru the GUI. > > > > Running version: GNU pspp 1.2.0-g0fb4db > > Operating system Wins 10 Home 64-bit > > > > Thanks, > > > > Nancy Cotton > > Data Manager > > I5O Consulting Services > > Email: <mailto:nancy.cot...@i5oconsulting.com> > nancy.cot...@i5oconsulting.com > > Website: <http://www.i5oconsulting.com/> www.i5oconsulting.com > > 888.591.7781 > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Pspp-users mailing list > Pspp-users@gnu.org > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pspp-users -- Alan D. Mead, Ph.D. President, Talent Algorithms Inc. science + technology = better workers http://www.alanmead.org "You're an interesting species. An interesting mix. You're capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other." -- Carl Sagan, Contact _______________________________________________ Pspp-users mailing list Pspp-users@gnu.org https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/pspp-users
