write.foreign {foreign} | R Documentation

## Write Text Files and Code to Read Them

### Description

This function exports 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"`.

For `package="SAS"` there is an optional argument `dataname="rdata"` taking a string that will be the SAS data set name.

### Value

None

### Author(s)

Thomas Lumley

### 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)

[Package foreign version 0.8-15 Index]