RE: Long-name/short-name complexity

[Wilson,Tom]

I have encountered some strange things when going back and forth between
versions of SPSS that support long variable names and versions that
don't.  As I recall, the situtation went a little like this.  We created
a data file in SPSS 11.5 that had short variable names.  Someone else
opened it in SPSS 12.0 and renamed the short variable names to long
variable names that were completely different.  When the file was opened
in SPSS 11.5 the variables did not appear to be renamed.

-----Original Message-----
From: address@hidden
[mailto:address@hidden On Behalf Of
Ben Pfaff
Sent: Sunday, April 24, 2005 6:29 PM
To: John Darrington
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Long-name/short-name complexity

Hi John.  In working on the MATCH FILES command I incidentally ran into
the new code for handling long variable names.  It seems needlessly
complex to me to maintain both a long name and a short name for each
variable.  Is there a good reason to do so?  I don't see any evidence in
the Syntax Reference Guide for SPSS 12.0 that SPSS keeps anything
similar around.

I would prefer to keep a single `name' member, which would be of
flexible length and retain the original capitalization, and then where
necessary (e.g. for SAVE and EXPORT) devise an equivalent 8-character
name.

(The immediate problem that I'm encountering is that
dict_rename_var() doesn't update both short and long names, but that is
in my opinion only a symptom of the increased
complexity.)

I am willing to write and test this change.  I think it should go into
0.4.0, unless you have some serious objections.

Ben
--
"Welcome to the Slippery Slope. Here is your handbasket.
 Say, can you work 70 hours this week?"
--Ron Mansolino


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