Convert Annotations, and Value Labels between Encodings

This function uses the base package function iconv to translate variable descriptions (a.k.a variable labels) and value labels of item, data.set, and importer objects into a specified encoding.

It will be useful in UTF-8 systems when data file come in some ancient encoding like 'Latin-1' as long used by Windows systems.

Usage

Iconv(x,from="",to="",...) 
# S3 method for class 'character'
Iconv(x,from="",to="",...) 
# S3 method for class 'annotation'
Iconv(x,from="",to="",...) 
# S3 method for class 'data.set'
Iconv(x,from="",to="",...) 
# S3 method for class 'importer'
Iconv(x,from="",to="",...) 
# S3 method for class 'item'
Iconv(x,from="",to="",...) 
# S3 method for class 'value.labels'
Iconv(x,from="",to="",...)

Arguments

x

a character vector or an object of which character data or attributes are to be re-encoded.

from

a character string describing the original encoding

to

a character string describing the target encoding

...

further arguments, passed to iconv

Value

Iconv returns a copy of its first argument with re-encoded character data or attributes.

See also

iconv, iconvlist

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Locate an SPSS 'system' file and get info on variables, their labels etc.
ZA5302 <- spss.system.file("Daten/ZA5302_v6-0-0.sav",to.lower=FALSE)

# Convert labels etc. from 'latin1' to the encoding of the current locale.
ZA5302 <- Iconv(ZA5302,from="latin1")

# Write out the codebook
writeLines(as.character(codebook(ZA5302)),
           con="ZA5302-cdbk.txt")

# Write out the description of the varialbes (their 'variable labels')
writeLines(as.character(description(ZA5302)),
            con="ZA5302-description.txt")
} # }