Haven allows you to load foreign data formats (SAS, SPSS and Stata) in to R by wrapping the fantastic ReadStat C library written by Evan Miller. Haven offers similar functionality to the base foreign package but:
It reads SPSS files (.dta and .por), reads Stata 13 and 14 files (foreign only works up to Stata 12), and SAS's proprietary binary format (SAS7BDAT + SAS7BCAT). It does not support many of the now more exotic formats supported by foreign.
Can also write SPSS, Stata, and SAS files.
Date times are converted to corresponding R classes and labelled vectors are returned as a new labelled class. You can easily coerce to factors or replace labelled values with missings as appropriate. All functions return tibbles.
Uses underscores instead of dots ;)
Haven is still a work in progress so please file an issue if it fails to correctly load a file that you're interested in.
# Install the released version from CRAN:
install.packages("haven")
# Install the cutting edge development version from GitHub:
# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("hadley/haven")read_sas("path/to/file")read_sav("path/to/file")read_dta("path/to/file")