SPSS® 12.0 Command Syntax Reference

30 Universals
• Formats listed in Table 4 cannot be used to read freefield data.
• Data values can appear anywhere within the column specification. Both leading and
trailing blanks are allowed.
• The sign (for example, “$” for DOLLAR format) or punctuation mark (for example, “.” for
DOT format) is ignored in the input data. Its position does not affect the value read into
storage.
• The default output format expands the width of the input format by the number of the
required signs or punctuation marks plus the decimal point if d is not 0. For example,
COMMA9.2 is expanded to COMMA12.2 to accommodate two possible commas and one
decimal point.
• DOT format is similar to COMMA format but reverses the symbols used for the thousands
separator and the decimal point. For example, in DOT format, 1.234 has the value of one
thousand, two hundred and thirty-four.
Binary and Hexadecimal Formats
SPSS is capable of reading and writing data in formats used by a number of programming
languages such as PL/I, COBOL, FORTRAN, and Assembler. The data can be binary, hexadecimal,
or zoned decimal. Formats described in this section can be used both as input
formats and output formats, but with fixed data only. The described formats are not available
on all systems. Consult the SPSS Base User’s Guide for your version of SPSS for details.
The default output format for all formats described in this section is an equivalent F
format, allowing the maximum number of columns for values with symbols and punctuation.
To change the default, use FORMATS or WRITE FORMATS.
IBw.d (integer binary):
The IB format reads fields that contain fixed-point binary (integer) data. The data might be generated
by COBOL using COMPUTATIONAL data items, by FORTRAN using INTEGER*2 or
INTEGER*4, or by Assembler using fullword and halfword items. The general format is a
signed binary number that is 16 or 32 bits in length.
The general syntax for the IB format is IBw.d, where w is the field width in bytes (omitted
for column-style specifications) and d is the number of digits to the right of the decimal point.
Since the width is expressed in bytes and the number of decimal positions is expressed in
digits, d can be greater than w. For example, both of the following commands are valid:
DATA LIST FIXED /VAR1 (IB4.8).
DATA LIST FIXED /VAR1 1-4 (IB,8).
Widths of 2 and 4 represent standard 16-bit and 32-bit integers, respectively. Fields read with
the IB format are treated as signed. For example, the one-byte binary value 11111111 would
be read as −1.
PIBw.d (positive integer binary):
The PIB format is essentially the same as IB except that negative numbers are not allowed.
This restriction allows one additional bit of magnitude. The same one-byte value 11111111
would be read as 255.