Re: st: Re: openning an SPSS file

[Richard Williams <Richard.A.Williams.5@nd.edu>]

> There is a potential trap with the approach of 'saving as' a tab delimited 
> file in SPSS and importing into Stata using 'insheet using filename'
>
> If there is a missing value (no entry of a number) in any of the 
> observations for a numeric variable in SPSS, SPSS outputs a space 
> character in the saved tab-delimited file. When the file is read by Stata 
> via 'insheet using filename', the space character converts the numeric 
> variable into a string variable and doing the  -summ var- command in Stata 
> says that there are zero observations for this variable. This is because 
> it is a string variable. I think that there is no need for SPSS to output 
> a space character, but that is the way it is. Deleting the space 
> character(s) in the tab-delimited file resolves the problem, but it is 
> only a workaround. This occurs with Stata7 and Stata8.
>
> Anothe workaround in Stata is to use
> -destring, replace-
>
> Regards, Garry
> g.anderson@unimelb.edu.au
I use Stat Transfer so I have not encountered this problem.  But, I imagine 
a workaround in SPSS would be to first recode your missing values, e.g. 
have something like RECODE VARNAME (SYSMIS = 999999).

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/