Reading Stata files

The following general rules apply to Stata data files:

• Variable names. Stata variable names are converted to IBM® SPSS® Statistics variable names in case-sensitive form. Stata variable names that are identical except for case are converted to valid variable names by appending an underscore and a sequential letter (_A, _B, _C, ..., _Z, _AA, _AB, ..., and so forth).
• Variable labels. Stata variable labels are converted to IBM SPSS Statistics variable labels.
• Value labels. Stata value labels are converted to IBM SPSS Statistics value labels, except for Stata value labels assigned to "extended" missing values. Value labels longer than 120 bytes are truncated.
• String variables. Stata strl variables are converted to string variables. Values longer than 32K bytes are truncated. Stata strl values that contain blobs (binary large objects) are converted to blank strings.
• Missing values. Stata "extended" missing values are converted to system-missing values.
• Date conversion. Stata date format values are converted to IBM SPSS Statistics DATE format (d-m-y) values. Stata "time-series" date format values (weeks, months, quarters, and so on) are converted to simple numeric (F) format, preserving the original, internal integer value, which is the number of weeks, months, quarters, and so on, since the start of 1960.