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)

