read.epiinfo             package:foreign             R Documentation

Read Epi Info data files

Description:

     Reads data files in the '.REC' format used by Epi Info versions 6
     and earlier and by EpiData. Epi Info is a public domain database
     and statistics  package  produced by the US Centers for Disease
     Control and EpiData is a freely available data entry and
     validation system.

Usage:

     read.epiinfo(file, read.deleted=FALSE, guess.broken.dates=FALSE,
                  thisyear=NULL, lower.case.names = FALSE)

Arguments:

    file: A filename, URL, or connnection 

read.deleted: Deleted records are read if 'TRUE', omitted if 'FALSE' or
          replaced with 'NA' if 'NA' 

guess.broken.dates: Attempt to convert dates with 0 or 2 digit year
          information (see Details below)

thisyear: A 4-digit year to use for dates with no year. Defaults to the
          current year

lower.case.names: Convert variable names to lowercase?

Details:

     Epi Info allows dates to be specified with no year or with a 2 or
     4 digits.  Dates with four-digit years are always converted to
     'POSIXct'. With the 'guess.broken.dates' option the function will
     attempt to convert two-digit years using the operating system's
     default method (see DateTimeClasses) and will use the current year
     or the 'thisyear' argument for dates with no year information.

     If 'read.deleted' is 'TRUE' the '"deleted"' attribute of the data
     frame indicates the deleted records.

Value:

     A data frame.

Note:

     Epi Info 2000, the current version, uses the Microsoft Access file
     format to store data. This may be readable with the 'RODBC' or
     'RDCOM' packages.

References:

     <URL: http://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/>, <URL: http://www.epidata.dk>

See Also:

     DateTimeClasses

Examples:

     ## Not run: 
     data<-read.epiinfo("oswego.rec",guess.broken.dates=TRUE,thisyear="1972")
     ## End(Not run)

