SPSS® 12.0 Command Syntax Reference

SEPARATOR Subcommand
CASESTOVARS 187
CASESTOVARS creates variable groups that contain new variables. There are two parts to the
name of a new variable—a rootname and an index. The parts are separated by a string. The
separator string is specified on the SEPARATOR subcommand.
• If a separator is not specified, the default is a period.
• A separator can contain multiple characters.
• The separator must be delimited by apostrophes or quotation marks.
• You can suppress the separator by specifying /SEPARATOR="".
GROUPBY Subcommand
The GROUPBY subcommand controls the order of the new variables in the new data file.
VARIABLE Group new variables by original variable. The procedure groups all variables
created from an original variable together. This is the default.
INDEX Group new variables by index variable. The procedure groups variables
according to the index variables.
Example
If the original variables are:
insure caseid month bps bpd
and the data are as shown in the first example, the commands:
SPLIT FILE BY insure.
CASESTOVARS
/ID=caseid
/INDEX=month
/GROUPBY=VARIABLE.
create a new data file with the following variable order:
insure caseid bps.1 bps.2 bps.3 bpd.1 bpd.2 bpd.3
• Variables are grouped by variable group—bps and bpd.
Example
Using the same original data, the commands:
SPLIT FILE BY insure.
CASESTOVARS
/ID=insure caseid
/INDEX=month
/GROUPBY=INDEX.
create a new data file with the following variable order:
insure caseid bps.1 bpd.1 bps.2 bpd.2 bps.3 bpd.3
• Variables are grouped by values of the index variable month—1, 2, and 3.