NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

       readstat input-file

       readstat [-f] input-file output-file

       readstat [-f] input-file metadata-file output-file

DESCRIPTION

       readstat  converts  data  set files from popular statistics packages stored in both plain-text and binary
       formats.

       In the first invocation style, readstat displays metadata  from  input-file,  including  the  row  count,
       column  count,  text  encoding,  and  timestamp.   input-file  should be a file with one of the following
       extensions:

       sas7bdat
              SAS binary file, created with SAS version 7 or newer

       xpt    SAS portable file, version 5 or version 8, created with the SAS XPORT command

       sav    SPSS uncompressed binary file

       zsav   SPSS compressed binary file

       por    SPSS portable file

       dta    Stata binary file, version 104 or newer

       If the row count cannot be determined from the file header, which is sometimes the case with SPSS  binary
       files and always the case with SPSS portable files, readstat will report a value of -1.

       In  the second invocation style, readstat converts input-file to output-file, e.g. a SAS portable file to
       a Stata binary file.  In addition to the preceding extension list, output-file may have extension csv  or
       xlsx, which creates a CSV or Excel file, respectively.

       The third invocation style is used when additional metadata about the input file, such as value labels or
       column widths, is stored in a separate file.  Several types of metadata file are supported:

       sas7bcat
              SAS binary "catalog" file, created with SAS version 7 or newer, containing value labels

       json   JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file, containing column metadata that cannot be gleaned from the
              input CSV. For details, see the manual page for the extract_metadata command.

       dct    Stata dictionary file, containing the data layout and column metadata for a plain-text input file.

       sps    SPSS command file, describing the data layout and column metadata for a plain-text input file.

       sps    SAS command file, describing the data layout and column metadata for a plain-text input file.

       The  last  three  formats  can  be used for both fixed-width and delimiter-separated (e.g. tab-separated)
       input files. These are commonly distributed along with plain-text ASCII data sets.

       Both input and output formats are implied by the file extension.

OPTIONS

       -f     Overwrite any existing output-file.

BUGS

       SAS binary files created by readstat do not open with current versions of SAS.

       The finer details of format strings (e.g. "%8.2g") are not properly converted between file formats.

AUTHOR

       Copyright (C) 2012-2019 Evan Miller, and others where indicated.

                                                 23 January 2019                                     READSTAT(1)