read.xport              package:foreign              R Documentation

Read a SAS XPORT Format Library

Description:

     Reads a file as a SAS XPORT format library and returns a list of
     data.frames.

Usage:

     read.xport(file)

Arguments:

    file: character variable with the name of the file to read.  The
          file must be in SAS XPORT format.

Value:

     If there is a more than one dataset in the XPORT format library, a
     named list of data frames, otherwise a data frame.  The columns of
     the data frames will be either numeric (corresponding to numeric
     in SAS) or factor (corresponding to character in SAS).  All SAS
     numeric missing values (including special missing values
     represented by '._', '.A' to '.Z' by SAS) are mapped to R 'NA'.

     Trailing blanks are removed from character columns before
     conversion to a factor.  Some sources claim that character missing
     values in SAS are represented by '' '' or '''': these are not
     treated as R missing values.

Author(s):

     Saikat DebRoy <saikat@stat.wisc.edu>

References:

     SAS Technical Support document TS-140: ``The Record Layout of a
     Data Set in SAS Transport (XPORT) Format'' available at <URL:
     http://ftp.sas.com/techsup/download/technote/ts140.html>.

See Also:

     'lookup.xport'

Examples:

     ## Not run: 
     read.xport("transport")
     ## End(Not run)

