17 Invoking pspp-convert

pspp-convert is a command-line utility accompanying PSPP. It reads an SPSS system or portable file input and writes a copy of it to another output in a different format. Synopsis:

pspp-convert [options] input output

pspp-convert --help

pspp-convert --version

The format of Iinput is automatically detected, except that the character encoding of old system files cannot always be guessed correctly. 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.

Use -O extension to override the inferred format or to specify the format for unrecognized extensions.

The following options are accepted:

-O format

--output-format=format

Specifies the desired output format. format must be one of the extensions listed above, e.g. -O csv requests comma-separated value output.

-c maxcases

--cases=maxcases

By default, all cases are copied from input to output. Specifying this option to limit the number of cases written to output to maxcases.

-e charset

--encoding=charset

Overrides the encoding in which character strings in input are interpreted. This option is necessary because old SPSS system files do not self-identify their encoding.

-h

--help

Prints a usage message on stdout and exits.

-v

--version

Prints version information on stdout and exits.