Translate SPSS syntax files to R source code [closed]

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.

---

We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.

Closed 6 years ago.

Improve this question

A friend is in search of a method to translate SPSS 'syntax' files to semantically equivalent R source code files.

I suppose, no one ever wrote a translator. But maybe I'm wrong.

PS: Please excuse the wrong use of 'syntax': People using SPSS tend to name an SPSS source program 开发者_JAVA百科a 'syntax file' ;-)

---

The short answer is that sorry, you are right, there is no tool for automatically translating SPSS script to R script. Even worse, such a tool would likely take several (many?) man-years to create, so don't hold your breath.

A small concession is that it is probably not to hard to create a tool for translating very small, specific subsets of SPSS to R. For example, if you have a chunk of code for reading in CSV files, then you could use regular expressions to extract the useful bits from the SPSS code and autogenerate some R code from them. In most instances however it will be far easier and faster to manually port the code yourself.

If all else fails, ask Bob Muenchen; he know a lot about porting SPSS to R.

---

Another option for this is SPSStoR, which claims to be able to translate many common (but basic) SPSS procedures to R code. It seems to be under active development on GitHub as of August 2014.

---

I know it's been more than 3 years after the question was originally asked, but it's worth noting that a German company by the name of eoda is actually working on such software. It's called translateR. It is currently in beta status and you can register for a beta test on their website.