P-STAT version 2.23 revision 15 is now available for
Windows, Unix and Linux.
TABFILE.IN TEXTFILE.IN
An error was discovered in the
Oct 27,09 code that added support of strings in this command.
This caused the initial character of a value to be lost.
This has now been fixed.
New Features:
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Two optional output files are now
available. They both show the original names of the variables
as taken from the input file, and the possibly revised names
which were made into legal P-STAT names.
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The LABEL.CHANGES identifier creates a P-STAT system file.
This can be listed to see the old and new names.
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The EXTENDED.LABELS identifier creates an external file
in P-STAT's labels format. In this file, the original names
appear as extended labels. This file could be used by LIST
to cause the original names to be shown in the LIST output.
SURVEY
SURVEY: an error that occurred when tests of signficance are used with
multiple response banner has
been fixed. The error caused a PPGIFT error message. It did
NOT produce incorrect results.
The formatting of tables of contents
has been enhanced to honor the use of
the joining symbols && and & &. The output width is no longer
restricted to 80 characters.
SPSS.OUT
An extra blank was sometimes
inserted into the SPSS portable file when
extended variable names were used.
This has been fixed.
P-STAT version 2.23 revision 13
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TABFILE.IN (and TEXTFILE.IN): Input values can now occur as
strings, like "abc". Delimiters (like a comma) or an
end-of-record indicator (like CR-LF), when found in a string,
are treated as ordinary characters, without special meaning.
A string is recognized when the initial nonblank character
of a value is a quote (") or apostrophe ('). The string ends
when the balancing quote or apostrophe is found.
The contents of the string are the characters (if any)
between the string boundaries. The contents are not
tested for the delimiter or end-of-record characters,
and are moved into the p-stat file as is.
The IGNORE.STRINGS option turns this feature off.
See HELP TEXTFILE.IN $ .
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SAMPLE: A SEEDS identifier has been added, which allows
the initializing values (three integers from 1 to 30,000)
to be specified. This overrides the normal random setting
based on date and time.
The final report of a SAMPLE command now shows the initial
settings that were used in that run.
If a subsequent run were done using those settings
as seeds, the same sequence would occur.
See HELP SAMPLE $ .
P-STAT version 2.23 revision 12
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This is a "housekeeping" update. References to the text
menus have been deleted and "NO MENUS $" produces the
message that "Text menus are no longer supported."
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The December release has a fix for a bug in processing the
helpfile. This problem was introduced in the November release.
The bug does not affect the helpfile as it is implemented for
use in a browser.
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The only significant change is a fix in the PC menus and
editor for a problem caused when the graphics library
we use fixed a "bug" which we had treated as a feature.
We have made a change. Now both the full screen editor and
the browser display their contents in the proper format and
behave as they did in revision 10.
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When selecting a directory from the program manager, P-STAT
now treats that directory as the current directory. In
previous releases the current directory was always the
directory that the windows operating system choose at the
start of the P-STAT session.
P-STAT version 2.23 revision 11
The major reason for this release was to solve
problems with the help file formats on PC's running
Vista. The only portable way to support help files
from the menus is by using HTML for browser access. The
text version continues to work on all supported systems.
The HTML version is also supported everywhere.
On PC/Windows the html files are stored in a folder
named PSTATHELP directly below the directory where
the P-STAT module
is installed. It can be accessed from within P-STAT by
clicking on "Help" from the menus.
On Linux and Solaris the
directory is named "helpfiles".
Bring up your browser and locate helpfiles below the
P-STAT install directory.
Then select "index.html" for
a complete list of helpfile entries.
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SPREADSHEET was new in release 10. There were some
interactions with the page change routines that caused
problems when multiple tables were produced.
These problems have been fixed.
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While the menu system was not designed to do complex PPL,
some changes have been made to simplify the process.
A problem with subcommands entered from the
menu system has been fixed.
P-STAT version 2.23 revision 10
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LIBRARIES: the use of libraries of P-STAT system files
is going to be discontinued.
Libraries were useful in the 1970s and 1980s,
but the availability of directories and folders
has made them unnecessary, and the supporting
commands (SAVE, FIND, etc) are going to be dropped.
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MAP: an error message used to occur when neither USE
nor MR.GROUPS was used, because there was no
specification of which variables were to be mapped.
This has been changed; when no variables are selected,
ALL of the character variables will be mapped.
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RENAME.VARIABLES: this is a new command which uses a LABELS
file to rename some or all of the variables in an
input file. The new names look like extended labels
in the labels file.
For example, a labels file record of
var22 'total.income'
renames var22 into total.income.
Use HELP RENAME.VARIABLES $ for details.
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PPL: the TRIM function now has an optional argument that
limits the number of characters being trimmed from a
given end of a value. For example
LRTRIM ( 'XXabcXX', 1, 'X' ) produces 'XabcX', whereas
LRTRIM ( 'XXabcXX', 'X' ) produces 'abc'.
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SURVEY: a new identifier SPREADSHEET provides enhancements
for users who export survey printout to spreadsheets
such as EXCEL. The usage is identical to the TABS
identifiers. A major difference in the output is that
strings such as variable names and value labels do not
get folded across multiple lines to fit narrow column
widths.
A new subcommand can be used with SPREADSHEET which
causes character fields to be enclosed in quotes.
It takes the form: "QUOTES ON" or "QUOTES OFF". the
default is OFF.
The SURVEY command will now MAP up to 24 characters of
a character variable and will report any variable that
has data values too large to map. An enhancement to the
MAP command will automatically map all character variables
if no variables are specified.
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SPSS.IN has been changed to check that changes made to make
variable names legal in P-STAT do not result in duplicate
variable names. If such a situation is encountered an
extra period is added to the end of one of the names and
a report is added to the printout.
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PC users: Vista does not support Windows HLP files.
The program WinHlp32.exe was no longer felt to meet
MicroSoft standards and was dropped from Vista. The
result is that ANY file that has the ".HLP" extension
causes an error condition
The main P-STAT help file has used the extension
HLP for many years even though it is not written as
a windows help file. It has been renamed PSTATHELP.DAT.
The subset of the help file for commands named in the
menu system was written as a windows help file and will
be unavailable (Vista users only) until it can be rewritten
as HTML.
P-STAT 2.23 Revision 9
September 1, 2007
- TURF:
A change has been
The format of the SIZE.AND.RANK values in the
REACH.RESULTS and FREQ.RESULTS files has been
changed from 3:59 (or such) to 3_59.
Why ? When these files are moved into EXCEL,
as people sometimes do, EXCEL wants to be helpful.
It sees 3:1, 3:2, etc and decides it is a TIME value.
When 3:60 comes along, it interprets that as 4
hours and displays 0.1666666667, 4 hours being
one sixth of a full day.
Using an underscore instead of a colon avoids this.
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Support for the ISO 8859-1 standards
There is a new identifier,
CHARACTER.SET (or CH.SET),
in the PostScript, PostScript.Setup and
SURVEY commands. "CH.SET german" has the
same character set as the older "UMLAUTE.ANSI".
"CH.SET ISO" adds most of the special
characters defined in the ISO 8859-1 standards.
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TAB delimited output in SURVEY
SURVEY has an expanded print buffer of 5000 characters.
An output width of 1500 should be sufficient to produce
a tabbed output file of the current maximum width of
91 columns. This limit will probably be expanded in the
next release.
P-STAT 2.23 Revision 8
April 1, 2007
- TURF:
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A TURF run can now be done in a stepwise manner.
This is indicated by using STEP instead of SIZE.
SIZE, followed by one or more sizes, causes a
separate, independent run for each given size.
This usage is unchanged.
STEP, followed by two or more sizes, processes the
sizes (which must ascend) in a stepwise manner.
The first size is done normally, then the items in
its best combination for reach (or optionally for
frequency) are fed into the second size, and so on.
STEP 8 12, does a size 8 run, and then forces the
items from the best size 8 combo into a size 12 run.
STEP 1 TO 9, creates a cascading effect in the
specified results file. This takes very little time.
A STEP run is usually much faster than a SIZE run,
but the final result will probably not be as good
as the full SIZE run.
In general, the larger the initial step, the better.
For example, STEP 8 12 should provide a better result
than STEP 6 12. However, the larger initial step would
make it slower.
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The REACH.RESULTS file has been revised and extended.
Three additional lines have been added; one provides the
UNIQUE reach provided by each item in the combination.
This is the reach that would be lost if that item were
dropped. The others are CUMULATIVE.FREQ and ADDITIONAL.FREQ.
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A SHOW option has been added to control which results file
summary variables are in fact shown. OMIT can also be used.
- PPL: MONTH.DAY.YEAR, DAY.MONTH.YEAR, types of functions.
These 6 functions now allow a character input argument
like '12/25/2006' or '06.12.25' or '12252006'.
Non-digits are simply treated as separators between the
date values.
- CLEANUPS:
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PUT and TEXTWRITER had erroneously not allowed a quoted
string to follow @BEFORE. This is now working properly.
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POSTSCRIPT.SETUP now allows numeric arguments after
the COLOR identifier.
POSTSCRIPT.CLOSE now supports longer filenames.
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On the PC, I/O system error message text has been added to
many of P-STAT's error messages when I/O problems occur.
Also on the PC, using command line arguments had in some
situations prevented use of PSFLAG. This is now fixed.
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The TOL test in COLLATE had succeeded only when the TOL
value was greater than the absolute difference between
the final values of the two cases being compared.
A greater than or equal test is now being used.
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The internal workspace used by all P-STAT commands has been
considerably increased. For example, the whopper/2 workspace
was 2.4 megabytes, it is now 4.0 megabytes.
P-STAT 2.23 Revision 7
December 11, 2006
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PPL: IF-OR-AND phrases.
The code for processing IF-OR-AND tests in PPL has been
completely re-written. This fixes a problem which could
occur when several AND and OR tests were done and the
phrases were not parenthesized.
- ERROR MESSAGES:
Long error messages (which are framed with EEE) will now
report whatever it can about where the run was when the
error occurred. For example, if a transfer file is in use,
its most recently read record number will be reported.
- USING THE F2 KEY ON THE PC:
Use of the F2 key causes a TURF command to immediately end;
the results of any already completed sizes are preserved.
Using the F2 key is now recognized from within other
commands such as MAKE or SORT; these now simply end with
an error message.
- MAXIMUM SIZE OF A PRINT LINE:
This has been increased from 1200 to 5000 characters. Thus
PRINTER.SETTINGS filename, OW 5000 $
would be supported.
P-STAT version 2.23 revision 6
September 17, 2006
P-STAT version 2.23 release 5
- MAKE:
Two options have been added to help in situations where
an input character like a quote is intended to be placed
within a quote-delimited string.
See OPTION 1 and OPTION 2 in the MAKE help section.
- TEXTFILE.IN (aka TABFILE.IN):
An identifier, DECIMAL.COMMA, can be used when the input
uses commas rather than periods for decimal separators.
- TEXTFILE.OUT (aka TABFILE.OUT):
An identifier, DECIMAL.COMMA, will cause the command to
write commas rather than periods for decimal separators.
For example, it writes 12,34 instead of 12.34 .
- SURVEY:
An identifier, DECIMAL.COMMA, will cause the command to
write commas rather than periods for decimal separators.
For example, it writes 12,34 instead of 12.34 .
- SPSS.IN:
The enhancement in revision 4 that allowed importing longer
names and labels had a problem with the labels file that
was created. This has been fixed.
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PC Menu System
A problem with the menu system which inserted a blank between
a pathname and an external output file name has been fixed.
P-STAT version 2.23 release 4
- TURF:
The cumulative results were incorrect when size was
greater than 20 and no weighting was in use.
This was corrected in the June 1, 2006 version.
- MAKE:
MAKE reads data in which the values are separated by
delimiters (like commas) and creates a P-STAT system file.
The input may be entered interactively, or it may be read
from an external ascii input file.
The names and types of the variables can be provided in
subcommands. They can also be read from a separate
DEFINITIONS text file, or taken from an existing P-STAT
system file. Identifiers NV and VARS can also be used.
The input file will usually have an end-of-case indicator
ending each case; carriage return with line feed is common,
as is just a line feed. These are identified by the program.
Non-standard delimiters and end-of-case fields are supported.
For example, using END.OF.CASE '~~~~~' would indicate
that 5 tildes are being used to end each case.
Values can be missing, and cases can be incomplete.
When reading 3 variables using a comma delimiter and a slash
end-of-case, abc,,def/ would get a missing second variable,
and abc/ would cause variables 2 and 3 to be missing.
A summary file can be requested. It shows the name, type,
and the number of missing and good cases for each variable.
The input characters can be changed as they are being read
by using CHANGE statements in the command.
- MAKE.FIXED
MAKE.FIXED is a new command which substantially replaces
the fixed format capabilities of the older BUILD command.
It reads fixed format data records from an
external ascii file and creates a new P-STAT system file.
There are no delimiters between the values in the input
records. Therefore, a given variable must use the same
number of characters from the same positions in each
of the cases in the input file.
The final variable, however, may be open-ended.
This is useful when a survey ends with a variable like
OTHER.COMMENTS, which might range from zero characters in
some cases to as many as 50,000 characters in other cases.
An open-ended variable requires an end-of-case field
like CR-LF (carriage return-line feed) as its delimiter.
The names and types of the variables, and their locations
within each case, are either provided as subcommands
or are found in a separate DEFINITIONS text file.
The input file will usually have an end-of-case indicator
ending each case; carriage return with line feed is common,
as is just a line feed. These are identified by the program.
Non-standard end-of-case fields are also supported.
For example, using END.OF.CASE '~~~~~' would indicate
that 5 tildes are being used to end each case.
A summary file can be requested. It shows the name, type,
the starting and ending byte locations in the input record,
and the number of missing and good cases for each variable.
The input file may have extra characters after the last
complete case. If so, the initial 20 of them are reported.
The input characters can be changed as they are being read
by using CHANGE statements in the command.
- UNMAKE
UNMAKE is a command which reverses the MAKE command.
It replaces the UNBUILD command.
UNMAKE reads a P-STAT system file and writes
two ascii files: a COMMAND file and a DATA file.
These can be used to re-create the system file
on some other computer.
The COMMAND file contains a MAKE command; this has the
various options that were used to write the DATA file.
It also provides the names and datatypes of the variables.
The COMMAND file can be text-edited; it will usually be
necessary to change the name that it has for the data file.
The command file can be transferred to in a P-STAT run.
The DATA file contains every value for every case.
One option is to place each value within quotes.
Another is to use long delimiters to terminate values.
- New Date Functions
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DAY.MONTH.YEAR (integer arg)
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DAY.YEAR.MONTH (integer arg)
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MONTH.DAY.YEAR (integer arg)
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MONTH.YEAR.DAY (integer arg)
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YEAR.DAY.MONTH (integer arg)
-
YEAR.MONTH.DAY (integer arg)
Version 2.23: previous releases
-
Release 2 is a minor
housekeeping upgrade to release 1. Release 3
has just one change which is in the TURF command.
This change improves the reordering of items by
their contribution in the reach.results and freq.results
files when the reach threshold exceeds one.
-
TURF:
-
The items of each group in the REACH.RESULTS file are now
placed in the order of their reach contribution.
Thus, the first named item had the best standalone reach.
Each of the remaining items is paired with the first one
in turn; the best becomes the second named item, and so on.
Additional lines may be written below each group.
They contain: cumulative reach, separate reach,
cumulative percent of sample reached,
and separate percent of sample reached.
The default is to add just the cumulative reach line.
The FREQ.RESULTS file is treated in a similar manner.
PCT.OF.MAX.REACH had been dropped from the REACH.RESULTS
and FREQ.RESULTS files; this statistic is now restored.
The maximum reach is more fully described in the report.
An OMIT option has been added; this allows the user
to supress some (or all) of the numeric values which
precede the item names in the RESULTS files.
For full details see:
TURF command: identifiers (July 8, 2005)
Examples of TURF input, the TURF report and the
REACH.RESULTS output.
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MAXIMUM SIZE OF CHARACTER VALUES:
-
Character values can now be as large as 50,000 characters.
The previous maximum was 999 characters.
This includes all use of character data in the p-stat system.
-
DEFAULT SIZE OF CHARACTER VALUES:
-
The default size of a character value has been increased
from 16 to 40. For example
GENERATE ##weekday:c = 'monday' $
GENERATE ##comment:50000 = 'many blanks' $
##weekday will be size 40, ending with 34 blanks.
##comment will be size 50000, ending with 49,989 blanks.
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LIST:
-
A new identifier, BLANK.MISSING, has been added.
It causes blanks to appear where one or more dashes would
otherwise be used to show a missing value.
This may be helpful in printing a REACH.RESULTS file.
Also, consider a size 50,000 value containing just 'x'.
If the 'x' is left justified, LIST prints x, as before.
If the 'x' is right justified, LIST prints literally
(49,999 blanks) x.
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EXAMINE 'external.file', eoc crlf, out work1 $
-
This is a new command that reads an external file
and counts how many times each type of ascii byte occurs.
It writes a report and, if requested, a P-STAT output file.
The report summarizes what was found. It also gives the
number of CR-LF combinations, and displays the first ten
and last ten bytes in the input file.
An end-of-case (EOC) field like CR LF can be supplied.
If so, the report is extended to show the number of cases
in the file, the smallest and largest record lengths,
and the number of characters, if any, after the final EOC.
The optional output file has a row for each different ascii
character found in the input file. Each row has:
(1) the ascii value of the character (0 to 255).
(2) the character, like A or CR or COMMA.
(3) how many times that character was found in the file.
(4) the location in the file where it was first found.
- SURVEY
-
It is now possible to print percents smaller than .05 rather than
having them replaced by the special character "*". Combine the
subcommands:
-
CHARACTER PERCENT '%' '%' '?' and
PLACES PERCENTS n, where n is between 2 and 5.
Download Version 2.23 release 8
- P-STAT modules - Updates for
many current customers can be downloaded from the web.
Features of earlier releases.