write.foreign            package:foreign            R Documentation

Write Text Files and Code to Read Them

Description:

     This function exports simple data frames to other statistical
     packages by writing the data as free-format text and writing a
     separate file of instructions for the other package to read the
     data.

Usage:

     write.foreign(df, datafile, codefile,
                   package = c("SPSS", "Stata", "SAS"), ...)

Arguments:

      df: A data frame

datafile: Name of file for data output

codefile: Name of file for code output

 package: Name of package

     ...: Other arguments for the individual 'writeForeign' functions

Details:

     The work for this function is done by
     'foreign:::writeForeignStata', 'foreign:::writeForeignSAS' and
     'foreign:::writeForeignSPSS'. To add support for another package,
     eg Systat, create a function 'writeForeignSystat' with the same
     first three arguments as 'write.foreign'. This will be called from
     'write.foreign' when 'package="Systat"'.

     Numeric variables and factors are supported for all packages:
     dates and times ('Date', 'dates', 'date', and 'POSIXt' classes)
     are also supported for SAS and characters are supported for SPSS.

     For 'package="SAS"' there are optional arguments
     'dataname="rdata"' taking a string that will be the SAS data set
     name and 'validvarname' taking either '"V6"' or '"V7"'.

Value:

     None

Author(s):

     Thomas Lumley and Stephen Weigand

Examples:

     ## Not run: 
     datafile<-tempfile()
     codefile<-tempfile()
     write.foreign(esoph,datafile,codefile,package="SPSS")
     file.show(datafile)
     file.show(codefile)
     unlink(datafile)
     unlink(codefile)
     ## End(Not run)

