1READSTAT(1)                 General Commands Manual                READSTAT(1)
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NAME

6       readstat - read and write data set files from SAS, SPSS, and Stata
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SYNOPSIS

9       readstat input-file
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11       readstat [-f] input-file output-file
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13       readstat [-f] input-file metadata-file output-file
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DESCRIPTION

16       readstat  converts  data  set  files  from  popular statistics packages
17       stored in both plain-text and binary formats.
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19       In the first invocation style,  readstat  displays  metadata  from  in‐
20       put-file,  including  the  row  count, column count, text encoding, and
21       timestamp.  input-file should be a file with one of the  following  ex‐
22       tensions:
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24       sas7bdat
25              SAS binary file, created with SAS version 7 or newer
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27       xpt    SAS  portable file, version 5 or version 8, created with the SAS
28              XPORT command
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30       sav    SPSS uncompressed binary file
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32       zsav   SPSS compressed binary file
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34       por    SPSS portable file
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36       dta    Stata binary file, version 104 or newer
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38       If the row count cannot be determined from the file  header,  which  is
39       sometimes the case with SPSS binary files and always the case with SPSS
40       portable files, readstat will report a value of -1.
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42       In the second invocation style, readstat converts input-file to output-
43       file,  e.g. a SAS portable file to a Stata binary file.  In addition to
44       the preceding extension list, output-file may  have  extension  csv  or
45       xlsx, which creates a CSV or Excel file, respectively.
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47       The  third  invocation style is used when additional metadata about the
48       input file, such as value labels or column widths, is stored in a sepa‐
49       rate file.  Several types of metadata file are supported:
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51       sas7bcat
52              SAS  binary "catalog" file, created with SAS version 7 or newer,
53              containing value labels
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55       json   JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file, containing column  meta‐
56              data that cannot be gleaned from the input CSV. For details, see
57              the manual page for the extract_metadata command.
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59       dct    Stata dictionary file, containing the  data  layout  and  column
60              metadata for a plain-text input file.
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62       sps    SPSS  command  file, describing the data layout and column meta‐
63              data for a plain-text input file.
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65       sps    SAS command file, describing the data layout and column metadata
66              for a plain-text input file.
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68       The  last three formats can be used for both fixed-width and delimiter-
69       separated (e.g. tab-separated) input files. These are commonly distrib‐
70       uted along with plain-text ASCII data sets.
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72       Both input and output formats are implied by the file extension.
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OPTIONS

75       -f     Overwrite any existing output-file.
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BUGS

78       SAS  binary files created by readstat do not open with current versions
79       of SAS.
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81       The finer details of format strings (e.g.  "%8.2g")  are  not  properly
82       converted between file formats.
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AUTHOR

85       Copyright (C) 2012-2019 Evan Miller, and others where indicated.
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89                                23 January 2019                    READSTAT(1)
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