I am given very big (around 10 Gb each) datasets in both SAS and Stata format. I am going to read them into R for analysis.
Is there a way to show what variables (columns) they contain inside without reading the whole data file? I often only need some of the variables. I can view them of course from File Explorer, but it's not reproducible and takes a lot of time.
Both SAS and Stata are available on the system, but just opening a file might take a minute or so.
If you have SAS run a proc contents or proc datasets to see the details of the dataset without opening it. You may want to do that anyways, so that you can verify variable types, lengths and formats.
libname myFiles 'path to your sas7bdatfiles';
proc contents data=myfiles.datasetName;
run;
See below for the dta solution, which you can update to SAS using read_sas.
library(haven)
# read in first row of dta
dta_head <- read_dta("my_data.dta",
n_max = 1)
# get variable names of dta
dta_names <- names(dta_head)
After examining the names and labels of your dta file, you can then remove the n_max = 1 option and read in full while possibly adding the col_select option specifying the subset of variables you wish to read in.
Let's say I have an excel column with 10 different cells with values. How do I create a variable in r that includes only the first four or first 6 cells in that column?
This question is very vague, please provide more information if you need specifics...
First of all, you'll want to use a library to import the contents of the excel file, I recommend using readxl (http://readxl.tidyverse.org)
You can then follow the documentation to read specific ranges from the excel file or just import all the contents and trim the resulting tibble.
Probably
# Install -readxl- package that loads in Excel spreadsheets
install.packages("readxl")
# Load -readxl- package for use
require(readxl)
# Change working directory to directory where spreadsheet is saved in
setwd("<Insert path here>")
# Save spreadsheet data to memory
myData <- read_excel("myData.xlsx", sheet = 1)
# Subset first four or six observations
firstFour <- myData[1:4,]
firstSix <- myData[1:6,]
Let me know if you don't understand.
I am using large datasets for my research (4.72GB) and I discovered "bigmemory" package in R that supposedly handles large datasets (up to the range of 10GB). However, when I use read.big.matrix to read a csv file, I get the following error:
> x <- read.big.matrix("x.csv", type = "integer", header=TRUE, backingfile="file.bin", descriptorfile="file.desc")
Error in read.big.matrix("x.csv", type = "integer", header = TRUE,
: Dimension mismatch between header row and first data row.
I think the issue is that the csv file is not full, i.e., it is missing values in several cells. I tried removing header = TRUE but then R aborts and restarts the session.
Does anyone have experience with reading large csv files with missing data using read.big.matrix?
It may not be solving your problem directly, but you might find a package of mine filematrix useful. The relevant function is fm.create.from.text.file.
Please let me know if it works for your data file.
Did you check bigmemory PDF at https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/bigmemory/bigmemory.pdf?
It was clearly described right there.
write.big.matrix(x, 'IrisData.txt', col.names=TRUE, row.names=TRUE)
y <- read.big.matrix("IrisData.txt", header=TRUE, has.row.names=TRUE)
# The following would fail with a dimension mismatch:
if (FALSE) y <- read.big.matrix("IrisData.txt", header=TRUE)
Basically, error means there is a column in the CSV file with row names. If you don't pass has.row.names=TRUE, bigmemory will consider row names a separate column, and without header you'll get mismatch.
I personally found data.table package more useful for dealing with large data set cases, YMMV
Exporting data.frame as .csv with code.
write.csv(df, "name.csv")
LogitTV.Rda has 3000 rows and 4 columns.
My code has an error when identifying the data.frame.
load("~/Home Automation/LogitTV.Rda")
write.csv(LogitTV.Rda, "LogitTV.csv")
Error in is.data.frame(x) : object 'LogitTV.Rda' not found
Checked the following:
1) Cleaned the console of previous history
2) Working Directory set as ~/Home Automation/
Anything else to check for preventing the error?
Thanks
LogitTV.Rda is, confusingly, not the name of the object that gets loaded.
Try:
loadedObj <- load("~/Home Automation/LogitTV.Rda")
write.csv(get(loadedObj), file="LogitTV.csv")
This assumes that the .Rda file contains only a single R object, and that it is a data frame or matrix.
It would be nice if write.csv had a way to accept the name of an object instead of the object itself (so get() was unnecessary), but I don't know of one.
I am trying to learn R and want to bring in an SPSS file, which I can open in SPSS.
I have tried using read.spss from foreign and spss.get from Hmisc. Both error messages are the same.
Here is my code:
## install.packages("Hmisc")
library(foreign)
## change the working directory
getwd()
setwd('C:/Documents and Settings/BTIBERT/Desktop/')
## load in the file
## ?read.spss
asq <- read.spss('ASQ2010.sav', to.data.frame=T)
And the resulting error:
Error in read.spss("ASQ2010.sav", to.data.frame = T) : error
reading system-file header In addition: Warning message: In
read.spss("ASQ2010.sav", to.data.frame = T) : ASQ2010.sav: position
0: character `\000' (
Also, I tried saving out the SPSS file as a SPSS 7 .sav file (was previously using SPSS 18).
Warning messages: 1: In read.spss("ASQ2010_test.sav", to.data.frame =
T) : ASQ2010_test.sav: Unrecognized record type 7, subtype 14
encountered in system file 2: In read.spss("ASQ2010_test.sav",
to.data.frame = T) : ASQ2010_test.sav: Unrecognized record type 7,
subtype 18 encountered in system file
I had a similar issue and solved it following a hint in read.spss help.
Using package memisc instead, you can import a portable SPSS file like this:
data <- as.data.set(spss.portable.file("filename.por"))
Similarly, for .sav files:
data <- as.data.set(spss.system.file('filename.sav'))
although in this case I seem to miss some string values, while the portable import works seamlessly. The help page for spss.portable.file claims:
The importer mechanism is more flexible and extensible than read.spss and read.dta of package "foreign", as most of the parsing of the file headers is done in R. They are also adapted to load efficiently large data sets. Most importantly, importer objects support the labels, missing.values, and descriptions, provided by this package.
The read.spss seems to be outdated a little bit, so I used package called memisc.
To get this to work do this:
install.packages("memisc")
data <- as.data.set(spss.system.file('yourfile.sav'))
You may also try this:
setwd("C:/Users/rest of your path")
library(haven)
data <- read_sav("data.sav")
and if you want to read all files from one folder:
temp <- list.files(pattern = "*.sav")
read.all <- sapply(temp, read_sav)
I know this post is old, but I also had problems loading a Qualtrics SPSS file into R. R's read.spss code came from PSPP a long time ago, and hasn't been updated in a while. (And Hmisc's code uses read.spss(), too, so no luck there.)
The good news is that PSPP 0.6.1 should read the files fine, as long as you specify a "String Width" of "Short - 255 (SPSS 12.0 and earlier)" on the "Download Data" page in Qualtrics. Read it into PSPP, save a new copy, and you should be in business. Awkward, but free.
,
You can read SPSS file from R using above solutions or the one you are currently using. Just make sure that the command is fed with the file, that it can read properly. I had same error and the problem was, SPSS could not access that file. You should make sure the file path is correct, file is accessible and it is in correct format.
library(foreign)
asq <- read.spss('ASQ2010.sav', to.data.frame=TRUE)
As far as warning message is concerned, It does not affect the data. The record type 7 is used to store features in newer SPSS software to make older SPSS software able to read new data. But does not affect data. I have used this numerous times and data is not lost.
You can also read about this at http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/read-spss-warning-message-Unrecognized-record-type-7-subtype-18-encountered-in-system-file-td3000775.html#a3007945
It looks like the R read.spss implementation is incomplete or broken. R2.10.1 does better than R2.8.1, however. It appears that R gets upset about custom attributes in a sav file even with 2.10.1 (The latest I have). R also may not understand the character encoding field in the file, and in particular it probably does not work with SPSS Unicode files.
You might try opening the file in SPSS, deleting any custom attributes, and resaving the file.
You can see whether there are custom attributes with the SPSS command
display attributes.
If so, delete them (see VARIABLE ATTRIBUTE and DATAFILE ATTRIBUTE commands), and try again.
HTH,
Jon Peck
If you have access to SPSS, save file as .csv, hence import it with read.csv or read.table. I can't recall any problem with .sav file importing. So far it was working like a charm both with read.spss and spss.get. I reckon that spss.get will not give different results, since it depends on foreign::read.spss
Can you provide some info on SPSS/R/Hmisc/foreign version?
Another solution not mentioned here is to read SPSS data in R via ODBC. You need:
IBM SPSS Statistics Data File Driver. Standalone driver is enough.
Import SPSS data using RODBC package in R.
See the example here. However I have to admit that, there could be problems with very big data files.
For me it works well using memisc!
install.packages("memisc")
load('memisc')
Daten.Februar <-as.data.set(spss.system.file("NPS_Februar_15_Daten.sav"))
names(Daten.Februar)
I agree with #SDahm that the haven package would be the way to go. I myself have struggled a bit with string values when starting to use it, so I thought I'd share my approach on that here, too.
The "semantics" vignette has some useful information on this topic.
library(tidyverse)
library(haven)
# Some interesting information in here
vignette('semantics')
# Get data from spss file
df <- read_sav(path_to_file)
# get value labels
df <- map_df(.x = df, .f = function(x) {
if (class(x) == 'labelled') as_factor(x)
else x})
# get column names
colnames(df) <- map(.x = spss_file, .f = function(x) {attr(x, 'label')})
There is no such problem with packages you are using. The only requirement for read a spss file is to put the file into a PORTABLE format file. I mean, spss file have *.sav extension. You need to transform your spss file in a portable document that uses *.por extension.
There is more info in http://www.statmethods.net/input/importingdata.html
In my case this warning was combined with a appearance of a new variable before first column of my data with values -100, 2, 2, 2, ..., a shift in the correspondence between labels and values and the deletion of the last variable. A solution that worked was (using SPSS) to create a new dump variable in the last column of the file, fill it with random values and execute the following code:
(filename is the path to the sav file and in my case the original SPSS file had 62 columns, thus 63 with the additional dumb variable)
library(memisc)
data <- as.data.set(spss.system.file(filename))
copyofdata = data
for(i in 2:63){
names(data)[i] <- names(copyofdata)[i-1]
}
data[[1]] <- NULL
newcopyofdata = data
for(i in 2:62){
labels(data[[i]]) <- labels(newcopyofdata[[i-1]])
}
labels(data[[1]]) <- NULL
Hope the above code will help someone else.
Turn your UNICODE in SPSS off
Open SPSS without any data open and run the code below in your syntax editor
SET UNICODE OFF.
Open the data set and resave it to remove the Unicode
read.spss('yourdata.sav', to.data.frame=T) works correctly then
I just came came across an SPSS file that I couldn't get open using haven, foreign, or memisc, but readspss::read.por did the trick for me:
download.file("http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/elections/IMSgeneral92.zip",
"IMSgeneral92.zip")
unzip("IMSgeneral92.zip", exdir = "IMSgeneral92")
# rio, haven, foreign, memisc pkgs don't work on this file! But readspss does:
if(!require(readspss)) remotes::install_git("https://github.com/JanMarvin/readspss.git")
ims92 <- readspss::read.por("IMSgeneral92/IMS_Nov7 92.por", convert.factors = FALSE)
Nice! Thanks, #JanMarvin!
1)
I've found the program, stat-transfer, useful for importing spss and stata files into R.
It resolves the issue you mention by converting spss to R dataset. Also very useful for subsetting super large datasets into smaller portions consumable by R. Not free, but a very useful tool for working with datasets from different programs -- especially if you don't have access to them.
2)
Memisc package also has an spss function worth trying.