pspp-convert
pspp-convert
is a command-line utility accompanying
PSPP. It reads an SPSS or SPSS/PC+ system file or SPSS portable
file or encrypted SPSS syntax file input and
writes a copy of it to another output in a different format.
Synopsis:
pspp-convert
[options] input outputpspp-convert --help
pspp-convert --version
The format of input is automatically detected, when possible.
The character encoding of old SPSS system files cannot always be
guessed correctly, and SPSS/PC+ system files do not include any
indication of their encoding. Use -e encoding
to specify
the encoding in this case.
By default, the intended format for output is inferred based on its extension:
csv
txt
Comma-separated value. Each value is formatted according to its variable’s print format. The first line in the file contains variable names.
sav
sys
SPSS system file.
por
SPSS portable file.
sps
SPSS syntax file. (Only encrypted syntax files may be converted to this format.)
pspp-convert
can convert most input formats to most output
formats. Encrypted SPSS file formats are exceptions: if the input
file is in an encrypted format, then the output file will be the same
format (decrypted). To decrypt such a file, specify the encrypted
file as input. The output will be the equivalent plaintext
file. Options for the output format are ignored in this case.
The password for encrypted files can be specified a few different
ways. If the password is known, use the -p option
(documented below) or allow pspp-convert
to prompt for it.
If the password is unknown, use the -a and -l
options to specify how to search for it, or --password-list
to specify a file of passwords to try.
Use -O format
to override the inferred format or to
specify the format for unrecognized extensions.
pspp-convert
accepts the following general options:
Sets the output format, where format is one of the extensions listed above, e.g.: -O csv. Use --help to list the supported output formats.
By default, all cases are copied from input to output. Specifying this option to limit the number of cases written to output to maxcases.
Overrides the encoding in which character strings in input are interpreted. This option is necessary because old SPSS system files, and SPSS/PC+ system files, do not self-identify their encoding.
By default, pspp-convert
includes all the variables from the
input file. Use this option to list specific variables to include;
any variables not listed will be dropped. The variables in the output
file will also be reordered into the given order. The variable list
may use TO
in the same way as in PSPP syntax, e.g. if the
dictionary contains consecutive variables a
, b
,
c
, and d
, then --keep='a to d' will include all
of them (and no others).
Drops the specified variables from the output.
When --keep and --drop are used together, --keep is processed first.
Prints a usage message on stdout and exits.
Prints version information on stdout and exits.
The following options affect CSV output:
By default, pspp-convert
writes user-missing values to CSV
output files as their regular values. With this option,
pspp-convert
recodes them to system-missing values (which
are written as a single space).
By default, pspp-convert
writes the variable names as the
first line of output. With this option, pspp-convert
omits
this line.
By default, pspp-convert
writes variables’ values to CSV
output files. With this option, pspp-convert
writes value
labels.
By default, pspp-convert
writes numeric variables as plain
numbers. This option makes pspp-convert
honor variables’
print formats.
This option sets the character used as a decimal point in output. The default is ‘.’.
This option sets the character used to separate fields in output. The default is ‘,’, unless the decimal point is ‘,’, in which case ‘;’ is used.
The option sets the character used to quote fields that contain the delimiter. The default is ‘"’.
The following options specify how to obtain the password for encrypted files:
Specifies the password to use to decrypt an encrypted SPSS system file
or syntax file. If this option is not specified,
pspp-convert
will prompt interactively for the password as
necessary.
Be aware that command-line options, including passwords, may be visible to other users on multiuser systems.
When used with -a (or --password-alphabet) and -l (or --password-length), this option specifies the starting point for the search. This can be used to restart a search that was interrupted.
Specifies the alphabet of symbols over which to search for an encrypted file’s password. alphabet may include individual characters and ranges delimited by ‘-’. For example, -a a-z searches lowercase letters, -a A-Z0-9 searches uppercase letters and digits, and -a ' -~' searches all printable ASCII characters.
Specifies the maximum length of the passwords to try.
Specifies a file to read containing a list of passwords to try, one per line. If file is -, reads from stdin.