SPSS Data Types
SPSS exposes numeric and string data types.
Certain specialized forms of data are handled by formats that impact visualization and export, not storage. The primary example of this is date and time data.
Numeric Data
Numeric data is stored as double-precision floating point.
Data formats adjust the visualized/exported representation of a data point, often only truncating the value. Adjusting these data formats does not destroy precision.
Given the literal value 123.45...
General Format |
Format |
Representation |
Fw |
F8 |
123 |
Fw.d |
F8.1 |
123.4 |
Nw |
N8 |
00000123 |
Nw.d |
N8.1 |
000123.4 |
See here for the built-in library of numeric functions.
Date and Time Formats
Format |
Representation |
DATETIME20 |
dd-MMM-yyyy hh:mm:ss |
DATETIME17 |
dd-MMM-yyyy hh:mm |
DATE11 |
dd-MMM-yyyy |
DATE9 |
dd-MMM-yy |
TIME8 |
hh:mm:ss |
TIME5 |
hh:mm |
ADATE10 |
mm/dd/yyyy |
Note that MMM appears as JAN, not 001.
See here for the built-in library of date and time functions.
String Data
String data is stored at a fixed length. This length is defined and adjusted through the format; Aw where w is the width.
See here for the built-in library of string functions.