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The following series of newsgroups includes a nice example of how
to take advantage of the fact that scratch variables in SPSS retain
their value from case to case.

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From: 		"adrian" <xinke@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: 	comp.soft-sys.stat.spss
Subject: 	Using variables across multiple .sav files
Date: 		Sat, 2 Oct 2004 12:08:14 -0700

Hi,

   I have the following problem:

Name                     Income
-------------------------------
Peter                       $1400
John                        $1200
Mary                       $1500
.
.
Jane                        $2400

I need to have a third column known as PerMax where
PerMax = (Income / Maximum Income) * 100%.

Hence, I use the aggregate procedure to output the aggregate variable,
maxIncome in a separate file.

May I know how to I retrieve that aggregate variable, maxIncome in the
separate file
so that I can derive the third column in my syntax file ? Thanks.

Regards,
Adrian

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From: 		Michael Lacy <Michael.Lacy.junk@colostate.edu>
Subject: 	Re: Using variables across multiple .sav files
Newsgroups: 	comp.soft-sys.stat.spss
Date: 		2 Oct 2004 10:24:45 -0700


You can "retrieve" that maximum variable from the aggregate file
by using MATCH FILES. However, there's another way to do this
that I might suggest:

sort cases income (d) .
if ($casenum eq 1) #max = income .
compute permax = #max .
exe .


-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=
Mike Lacy,  Ft Collins CO 80523
Clean out the 'junk' to email me.


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From: 		Bruce Weaver <bweaver@lakeheadu.ca>
Newsgroups: 	comp.soft-sys.stat.spss
Subject: 	Re: Using variables across multiple .sav files
Date: 		Mon, 04 Oct 2004 07:15:02 -0400

Michael.Lacy.junk@colostate.edu wrote:

> You can "retrieve" that maximum variable from the aggregate file
> by using MATCH FILES. However, there's another way to do this
> that I might suggest:
> 
> sort cases income (d) .
> if ($casenum eq 1) #max = income .
> compute permax = #max .
> exe .


And this works because scratch variables (i.e., variables that start 
with #) retain their value from one case to the next.  Thanks for the 
reminder, Mike--that's a useful trick.

I think the OP wanted the following though, as the final compute statement:

compute permax = income/#max*100 .

Cheers,
Bruce
-- 
Bruce Weaver
bweaver@lakeheadu.ca
www.angelfire.com/wv/bwhomedir


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