sel if not working

[news]

I try to select a country within a large multi-country file, the
European Social Survey. The SELECT IF command doesn't work, to my
surprise. the new outfile when reopened still shows the complete data set.

Does Select of not work with alphanumeric variables ?

Here is my syntax :

GET FILE='xx.sav'.
sel if cntry = "FR".
freq cntry.
save outFILE='xxFR.sav'.


--
..........................................
Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France

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[Art Kendall]

That is *very surprising*.  I don't have an answer as to why this is
happening.

To help in debugging your situation
1) check the length of the string in the variable.
2) open a new instance of SPSS. Cut, paste, and run the syntax below the
sig block.  See why the checks are different.
3) try to create a small set of syntax similar to that below which does
not create a check flag that you would expect.


Art Kendall
Social Research Consultants

data list list/ country (a4).
begin data
FR
FR.
"FR. "
" FR."
fr.
"fr."
fr
ab
AB
CD.
cD.
END DATA.
COMPUTE CHECK1 = COUNTRY EQ "FR.".
COMPUTE CHECK2 = upcase(COUNTRY) EQ "FR.".
COMPUTE CHECK3 = INDEX(COUNTRY,"FR.").
COMPUTE CHECK4 = INDEX(COUNTRY,"FR").
COMPUTE CHECK5 = INDEX(COUNTRY,"fr.").
LIST.


Frank Thomas wrote:

> I try to select a country within a large multi-country file, the
> European Social Survey. The SELECT IF command doesn't work, to my
> surprise. the new outfile when reopened still shows the complete data
> set.
>
> Does Select of not work with alphanumeric variables ?
>
> Here is my syntax :
>
> GET FILE='xx.sav'.
> sel if cntry = "FR".
> freq cntry.
> save outFILE='xxFR.sav'.
>
>
> --
> ..........................................
> Dr. Frank Thomas
> FTR Internet Research
> 93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
> France
>
> =====================
> To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
> [hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
> command. To leave the list, send the command
> SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
> For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
> INFO REFCARD
>
>

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD

[news]

Art,
In the meantime I found a workaround : autorecode the text var into a
numeric variable, and it worked.
Thanks for your help,
- Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas wrote:

> I try to select a country within a large multi-country file, the
> European Social Survey. The SELECT IF command doesn't work, to my
> surprise. the new outfile when reopened still shows the complete data
> set.
>
> Does Select of not work with alphanumeric variables ?
>
> Here is my syntax :
>
> GET FILE='xx.sav'.
> sel if cntry = "FR".
> freq cntry.
> save outFILE='xxFR.sav'.
>
>
> --
> ..........................................
> Dr. Frank Thomas
> FTR Internet Research
> 93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
> France
>
> =====================
> To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
> [hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
> command. To leave the list, send the command
> SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
> For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
> INFO REFCARD
>
>

--
..........................................
Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD

[Melissa Ives]

Are you certain that the new dataset was not created?  I believe that with the ability to open multiple datasets at once that you may be seeing the current working dataset, with the new dataset was saved as you expected, but not opened.

Try adding dataset name commands.

GET FILE='xx.sav'.
DATASET NAME full.
sel if cntry = "FR".
freq cntry.
save outFILE='xxFR.sav'.
Get file='xxFR.sav'.
Dataset name france.


Melissa

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Thomas
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 9:56 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [SPSSX-L] sel if not working

Art,
In the meantime I found a workaround : autorecode the text var into a numeric variable, and it worked.
Thanks for your help,
- Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas wrote:

> I try to select a country within a large multi-country file, the
> European Social Survey. The SELECT IF command doesn't work, to my
> surprise. the new outfile when reopened still shows the complete data
> set.
>
> Does Select of not work with alphanumeric variables ?
>
> Here is my syntax :
>
> GET FILE='xx.sav'.
> sel if cntry = "FR".
> freq cntry.
> save outFILE='xxFR.sav'.
>
>
> --
> ..........................................
> Dr. Frank Thomas
> FTR Internet Research
> 93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
> France
>
> =====================
> To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
> [hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except
> the command. To leave the list, send the command SIGNOFF SPSSX-L For a
> list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command INFO
> REFCARD
>
>

--
..........................................
Dr. Frank Thomas
FTR Internet Research
93110 Rosny-sous-Bois
France

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to [hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the command. To leave the list, send the command SIGNOFF SPSSX-L For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command INFO REFCARD

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