I've made this suggestion before, but I think it's worth a quick
repetition now.
Datasets (SPSS 14+) were implemented to operate parallel in many ways
to SPSS-format saved files on disk; but, deliberately, with certain
major differences. The most important of these was that GET FILE=...
and SAVE OUTFILE=... cannot refer to datasets.
A corollary, intended or not, is that XSAVE OUTFILE= cannot refer to
a dataset, either.
The DATASET commands offer reasonably good equivalents for GET and
SAVE; but there's no equivalent to XSAVE. If you use XSAVE, you use
an explicit disk file.
That matters, because you can get some effects with XSAVE that are,
at best, difficult any other way.
I was reminded of this just now, when I wrote some code that needs
XSAVE for such a purpose. The code's in my SPSSX-L posting (my
*second* in this thread),
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2007 18:43:13 -0500
From: Richard Ristow <
[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [Many-to-many] Merge Files
To:
[hidden email]
-Cheers, and SPSS ever onward,
Richard
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