Re: Error # 61

Posted by Mike on Dec 05, 2012; 5:16pm
URL: http://spssx-discussion.165.s1.nabble.com/Error-61-tp5716679p5716692.html

To be historically accurate, the MS-Dos device names and conventions were
based on CP/M, "Control Program/Microcomputer", which in turn were based
on the DEC conventions.  See the CP/M entry in Wikipedia from which the
following quote comes from:

|CP/M's command line interface was patterned after the operating systems
from
|Digital Equipment, such as RT-11 for the PDP-11 and OS/8 for the PDP-8.

and

|Many of the basic concepts and internal mechanisms of early versions of
MS-DOS
|resembled those of CP/M.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M

My first microcomputer was a Kaypro 4 which ran CP/M off of 5.25 inch
floppies
(and came with Wordstar, dbase II, Supercalc, Kermit, and other software).
Of course,
in my day job, I worked on Univac/Sperry (where I first learned how to use
SPSS
on a mainframe), IBM Wylbur/SuperWylbur/CMS, DEC Vaxen, and Sun Unix.

-Mike Palij
New York University
[hidden email]


----- Original Message -----
From: Art Kendall
To: [hidden email]
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2012 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: Error # 61


Most of the DOS devices and many of the conventions were the same as
late-60;s Digital Equipment Company devices and conventions.
DEC      dos
tty: ==> tt:
con: == > con:
lpt1: ==> lpt1:
dska: ==> a:
copy ==> copy
pip  ==> pip
call ==> call
ren  ==> ren
del  ==> del
dir  ==> dir
type ==> type
name.ext ==> name.ext
dev:name.ext == > dev:name.ext
colon for device
/ for a switch

I fact when DOS came out I was able to pick it up fairly quickly because
switches almost always appeared to be  RT-11 switches that instead of being
spelled out were abbreviated to one letter. e.g.,
 /since ==> /s


Art Kendall
Social Research Consultants
On 12/5/2012 10:54 AM, J. R. Carroll wrote:

(sent with the wrong email - my apologies if you get this twice)


//


Absolutely interesting - never knew this.


I looked this up and found:


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/74496/en-us


(some of them are obvious).


Good to know, thanks Jon.


-J


----


J. R. Carroll
Cell:  [phone]
Email: [hidden email]
          [hidden email]
          [hidden email]








On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 10:38 AM, Jon K Peck <[hidden email]> wrote:

I think you are encountering a legacy of the ancient DOS days.  Some things
live forever, I guess.  con is/was the name of a built-in device in DOS for
the console, along with lpt1 and a few others.  Trying to save to
con.anything fails, whether it is SPSS or other software.  Try it in
Notepad, for example (I used c:\temp\temp\con.txt) and you get a message
like
con
This file name is a reserved device name
or
... already exists, do you want to replace it, followed by a cannot create
error message


Jon Peck (no "h") aka Kim
Senior Software Engineer, IBM
[hidden email]
new phone: [phone]




From:        Philip Burgess <[hidden email]>
To:        [hidden email],
Date:        12/05/2012 08:16 AM
Subject:        [SPSSX-L] Error # 61
Sent by:        "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <[hidden email]>






I'm running SPSS 20 on a 64bit Windows 7 machine (with 12 processors &
192 GB RAM).

I process a large (7 mill record file) with no issue until I try to save:

file handle     ActiveDir / name = 'D:\AMHOCN\Data\CMHC 2011'.
sav out         'ActiveDir\con.sav' .

>Error # 61 in column 10.  Text: ActiveDir\con.sav
>The filename is not valid.
>Execution of this command stops.

I stumbled (don't know how I got there) that if the file to save was
'cons.sav' - there was no issue and SPSS saved successfully (and the
sav file worked fine).

sav out         'ActiveDir\cons.sav' .

All that is different  is the name of the sav file - con vs. cons

(For interest, the 'con' file is an event file (service contacts) and
the database table is named 'con' - I wanted to maintain names between
the database tables and the SPSS analysis files I generate).

I'm puzzled. Any ideas?

Thanks;

Philip

[hidden email]

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