SAS Files (SAVE TRANSLATE command)

Data can be saved in numerous SAS data file formats. A SAS transport file is a sequential file that is written in SAS transport format and can be read by SAS with the XPORT engine and PROC COPY or the DATA step.

• Certain characters that are allowed in IBM® SPSS® Statistics variable names are not valid in SAS, such as @, #, and $. These illegal characters are replaced with an underscore when the data are exported.
• IBM SPSS Statistics variable names that contain multibyte characters (e.g., Japanese or Chinese characters) are converted to variable names of the general form Vnnn, where nnn is an integer value.
• IBM SPSS Statistics variable labels containing more than 40 characters are truncated when exported to a SAS v6 file.
• Where they exist, IBM SPSS Statistics variable labels are mapped to the SAS variable labels. If no variable label exists in the IBM SPSS Statistics data, the variable name is mapped to the SAS variable label.
• SAS allows only one value for missing, whereas IBM SPSS Statistics allows the definition of numerous missing values. As a result, all missing values in IBM SPSS Statistics are mapped to a single missing value in the SAS file.
• SAS data file names can be up to 32 characters in length. Blank spaces and non-alphanumeric characters other than the underscore ("_") are not allowed and names have to start with a letter or an underscore, numbers can follow.

The following table shows the variable type matching between the original data in IBM SPSS Statistics and the exported data in SAS.