Re: Suggestions

[Ben Pfaff]

John Darrington <address@hidden> writes:

> Actually, I'm not too sure from whence the figure of 60 comes.   The
> spssv14 documentation says 120 bytes, the limit that sys-file-writer
> permits is 255 bytes, and as you discovered, the dictionary.c and
> value-labels.c specifies 60

The limits of 120 bytes on a variable label and 60 bytes on a
value label are from the SPSS file format documentation available
in:
        http://www.wotsit.org/getfile.asp?file=spssdata&sc=286590819

A little bit of experimentation with my collection of SPSS .sav
files from around the web shows that SPSS itself doesn't abide by
these limits:

    "4740_F1.sav" near offset 0x14f4: Variable YRDEFACE has label of invalid 
length 135.
    "6068-DURANT.Sav" near offset 0x114: Variable QP2A has label of invalid 
length 139.
    "Poll2006.sav" near offset 0x3681: Value label has invalid length 78.
    "bazaTL_lab.sav" near offset 0xa1c: Variable Q17 has label of invalid 
length 147.
    "cpdsI2006_ger.sav" near offset 0x178: Variable GOVRIGHT has label of 
invalid length 183.
    "sexuality_Fiji_2.sav" near offset 0x2fe4: Variable VASECOP has label of 
invalid length 143.

Some of these files were written by SPSS as early as version 14.

It would be really easy to relax each of these limits to 255
bytes.  I'm willing to try that unless you object.
-- 
Ben Pfaff 
http://benpfaff.org