Does read.xport read both version 5 and version 8 xpt files? This link to the Library of Congress can get you started on how to interpret the header. (It states that Version 8 was introduced in 2012 but was not in wide use as of early 2017.)
https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000464.shtml Bill Dunlap TIBCO Software wdunlap tibco.com On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 12:18 PM, WRAY NICHOLAS via R-help < r-help@r-project.org> wrote: > > -------- Original Message ---------- > From: WRAY NICHOLAS <nicholas.w...@ntlworld.com> > To: peter dalgaard <pda...@gmail.com> > Date: 14 April 2018 at 20:18 > Subject: Re: [R] Reading xpt files into R > > > Well yesterday I'd downloaded the "foreign" package and tried to open the > xpt file using that: > > library(foreign) > read.xport("test.xpt") > > I got the following error and warning messages: > > > read.xport("test.xpt") > Error in read.xport("test.xpt") : > The specified file does not start with a SAS xport file header! > In addition: Warning message: > In readBin(file, what = character(0), n = 1, size = > nchar(xport.file.header, : > null terminator not found: breaking string at 10000 bytes > > I can open the xpt using wordpad and there is a header but it seems to be > just text. I really don't know what constitutes an " > SAS xport file header" > > Nick > > > > On 14 April 2018 at 10:32 peter dalgaard <pda...@gmail.com> wrote: > > That's what he tried, but the bottom line is that just because something > is called foo.xpt there is no guarantee that it actually is a SAS XPORT > file. Firefox plugins use the same extension but it could really be > anything - naming conventions are just that: conventions. > > So dig deeper and find out what the file really is (or was supposed to be). > > -pd > > > > > On 14 Apr 2018, at 00:18 , David Winsemius < > dwinsem...@comcast.net> wrote: > > > > There is a read.xport function in the foreign package and I > think most people would have chosen that one as a first attemp. It's part > of the standard R distribution. It refers you to https://support.sas.com/ > techsup/technote/ts140.pdf for details on the format. > > > > > -- > Peter Dalgaard, Professor, > Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School > Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark > Phone: (+45)38153501 > Office: A 4.23 > Email: pd....@cbs.dk Priv: pda...@gmail.com > > > > > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/ > posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
