Wow, that explains a lot! Thanks for your detailed explanation!
On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 20:27, Ben Pfaff <b...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote: > Ah. I can easily explain what the problem is. > > SPSS data files have a variable record for each variable. For string > variables with a width greater than 8, they actually have a variable record > for every 8 columns of width (rounding up). Lots of places in data files > refer to variables by the index that includes such extra records. So, if > you have a string variable with width 24, and it's the third variable in > the file following two numeric variables, then it will have indexes 2, 3, > and 4. When such a variable is referenced by index, only index 2 is > supposed to be used. PSPP complains if index 3 or 4 is used instead, and > SPSS (apparently) crashes instead. > > Maybe I should make PSPP more tolerant, just giving a warning instead of > an error. If so, then it would be easy to fix up a file with this error by > using pspp-convert. > > On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 10:24 AM Ignácz, István <istvan.ign...@neticle.com> > wrote: > >> Thanks, Ben for the quick response! >> >> Yes, the ultimate goal is to add a patch to the package which fixes the >> problem or throws an error if the user of the package (in this case me) >> provides invalid input. I think I'm facing the later. >> >> One significant difference between the test file and my case is that in my >> case no variables and no cases are recognized so the reading process >> basically crashes. >> I think I've found the part where the PSPP ends up in a 'goto error' >> (sys-file-reader.813) but I lack the context of what's going on here. I >> guess the value labels could be misconfigured? Maybe there's a value in a >> record that doesn't have a label in the variable settings? >> >> If I would know a little bit more about what happens in that part and why >> that causes an error, maybe I could force my (and tiamo's) code to >> reliably >> produce the error. >> >> Thanks, >> István >> >> On Wed, 10 Jun 2020 at 18:51, Ben Pfaff <b...@cs.stanford.edu> wrote: >> >> > I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but PSPP has a test case >> > that intentionally provokes this error message. I'm attaching the file >> it >> > produces. >> > >> > I guess the ultimate goal here should be to fix tiamo's package? >> > >> > On Wed, Jun 10, 2020 at 9:42 AM Ignácz, István < >> istvan.ign...@neticle.com> >> > wrote: >> > >> >> Greetings, >> >> >> >> I think this is not the usual topic on this list, excuse me if you >> find it >> >> off-topic. >> >> >> >> I'm facing a tough bug in my software and I'm looking for some help to >> be >> >> able to take the next steps. >> >> >> >> Our software generates sav files via tiamo's package: >> >> https://packagist.org/packages/tiamo/spss >> >> Usually, everything works fine, but in some cases, we generate >> malformed >> >> files. In this case, SPSS crashes without any notice, however, PSPP at >> >> least gives a useful error message: >> >> Variable index n refers to long string continuation. >> >> >> >> I cannot reproduce this issue on my side, so I tried to reverse >> engineer >> >> the PSPP codebase to find any cases when it could occur. So far not >> with >> >> much luck. >> >> >> >> Could you help me with some example cases? >> >> >> >> Thanks for your help, >> >> István >> >> >> > >> >> -- >> >> *István Ignácz* >> Software Engineer @ Neticle >> >> +36 30 460 5356 >> istvan.ign...@neticle.com >> neticle.com >> >> <https://neticle.com/mediaintelligence/en/> <https://zurvey.io/> >> <https://api.neticle.com/> <https://data.neticle.com/documentation> >> >> Neticle Labs Ltd. >> Address: H-1082 Budapest, Leonardo da Vinci 41. (2nd floor/12) >> Billing address: H-1213 Budapest, Veto street 10. > >
