Transferring between data formats

• Stat/Transfer is a convenient program that handles a lot of different file formats. Examples of its usage (from a unix terminal window or dos prompt) are:

  • st "*.dat" "*.mat" -y -o (converts all Gauss data (.dat) files in the current directory to Matlab (.mat))

  • st "*.xls" "*.dat" -y -o (converts all Excel data files (.xls) files in the current directory to Gauss (.dat)).
  I have noticed discrepancies after converting from .xls to .dat and then loading the data in Gauss, so I would suggest always double checking the consistency of the new and old versions of the data set after converting file types.

  Some additional information on using Stat/Transfer can be found here .

• Another program that handles change of data formats is DBMS Copy, some information on it can be found here .

• Excel files can also be saved in comma separated value formats (.csv) using save as in excel and then loaded as text files in many programs. If doing double check that all of the digits after the decimal show up in the .csv file. If not, it may be necessary to reformat the cells in the .xls so that many digits show up after the decimal.