SPSS® 12.0 Command Syntax Reference

140 APPLY DICTIONARY
• Any variables specified in the TARGET subcommand that do not already exist are created,
using the variable definition attributes of the variable specified in the SOURCE subcommand.
Example
APPLY DICTIONARY from “lastmonth.sav”
/SOURCE VARIABLES = var1, var2, var3.
• Variable definition attributes from the specified variables in the source data file are
applied to matching variables in the working data file.
• For variables with matching names but different types, only variable labels from the
source variable are copied to the target variable.
• In the absence of a NEWVARS subcommand, no new variables will be created.
FILEINFO Subcommand
FILEINFO applies global file definition attributes from the source data file to the working
(target) data file.
• File definition attributes in the working (target) data file that are undefined in the source
data file are not affected.
• This subcommand is ignored if the source data file is the working data file.
• This subcommand is ignored if no keywords are specified.
• For keywords that contain an associated value, the equal sign between the keyword and
the value are required—for example, DOCUMENTS = MERGE.
DOCUMENTS Applies documents (defined with the DOCUMENTS command) from the
source data file to the working (target) data file. You can REPLACE or
MERGE documents.
DOCUMENTS = REPLACE replaces any documents in the working data file,
deleting pre-existing documents in the file. This is the default if DOCUMENTS
is specified without a value.
DOCUMENTS = MERGE merges documents from the source and working
(target) data file. Unique documents in the source file that don’t exist in the
working (target) data file are added to the working data file. All documents
are then sorted by date.
FILELABEL Replaces the file label (defined with the FILE LABEL command).
MRSETS Applies multiple response set definitions from the source data file to the
working (target) data file. (Note that multiple response sets are currently used
only by the TABLES add-on component.) Multiple response sets in the source
data file that contain variables that don’t exist in the working data file are
ignored, unless those variables are created by the same APPLY DICTIONARY
command. You can REPLACE or MERGE multiple response sets.
MRSETS = REPLACE deletes any existing multiple response sets in the
working (target) data file, replacing them with multiple response sets from
the source data file.