Inspecting Portable (.por) Files with pspp show-por

The pspp show-por command reads an SPSS "portable file", which usually has a .por extension, and produces a report. The basic syntax is:

pspp show-por <MODE> <INPUT> [OUTPUT]

where <MODE> is a mode of operation (see below), <INPUT> is the SPSS portable file to read, and [OUTPUT] is the output file name. If [OUTPUT] is omitted, output is written to the terminal.

The portable file format is mostly obsolete. The "system file" or .sav format should be used for writing new data files. Use pspp show to inspect .sav files.

The following <MODE>s are available:

• dictionary: Outputs the file dictionary in detail, including variables, value labels, documents, and so on. With --data, also outputs cases from the system file.

  This can be useful as an alternative to PSPP syntax commands such as DISPLAY DICTIONARY.

  pspp convert is a better way to convert a portable file to another format.

• metadata: Outputs portable file metadata not included in the dictionary:

  • The creation date and time declared inside the file (not in the file system).

  • The name of the product and subproduct that wrote the file, if present.

  • The author of the file, if present. This is usually the name of the organization that licensed the product that wrote the file.

  • The character set translation table embedded in the file, as an array with 256 elements, one for each possible value of a byte in the file. Each array element gives the byte value as a 2-digit hexadecimal number paired with the translation table's entry for that byte. Since the file can technically be in any encoding (although the corpus universally uses extended ASCII), the entry is given as a character interpreted in two character sets: windows-1252 and code page 437, in that order. (If the two character sets agree on the code point, then it is only given once.)

    For example, consider a portable's file translation table at offset 0x9e, which in the portable character set is ±. Suppose it has value 0xb1, which is ± in windows-1252 and ▒ in code page 437. Then that array element would be ["9e", "±", "▒"].

  This command is most useful with some knowledge of the portable file format.

• histogram: Reports on the usage of characters in the portable file. Produces output in the form of an array for each possible value of a byte in the file. Each array element gives the byte value, the byte's character, and the number of times that the byte appears in the file. A given byte is omitted from the table if it does not appear in the file at all, or if the translation table leaves it unmapped. It is also omitted if the byte's character is the ISO-8859-1 encoding of the byte (for example, if byte 0x41 represents A, which is A in ISO-8859-1).

  This command is most useful with some knowledge of the portable file format.

Options

The following options affect how pspp show-por reads <INPUT>:

• --data [<MAX_CASES>]
  For mode dictionary, and encodings, this instructs pspp show-por to read cases from the file. If <MAX_CASES> is given, then that sets a limit on the number of cases to read. Without this option, PSPP will not read any cases.

The following options affect how pspp show-por writes its output:

• -f <FORMAT>
--format <FORMAT>
  Specifies the format to use for output. <FORMAT> may be one of the following:

  • json: JSON using indentation and spaces for easy human consumption.
  • ndjson: Newline-delimited JSON.
  • output: Pivot tables with the PSPP output engine. Use -o for additional configuration.
  • discard: Do not produce any output.

  When these options are not used, the default output format is chosen based on the [OUTPUT] extension. If [OUTPUT] is not specified, then output defaults to JSON.

• -o <OUTPUT_OPTIONS>
  Adds <OUTPUT_OPTIONS> to the output engine configuration.