Date:         Mon, 24 Apr 2006 00:00:30 -0400
Reply-To:     Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
Sender:       "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <SPSSX-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Richard Ristow <wrristow@mindspring.com>
Subject:      Re: DATASET duplicating, SPSS 14: Best practice?
In-Reply-To:  <E0428445172CB7469BF187FF4D00514902C052E5@CHIEMAIL1.spss.co m>
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I'd asked,

>>I have a dataset named Thompson_exampledata. It is active. I want to
>>make a copy of it in a new dataset named  Thompson_exampledata. The
>>following syntax seems to have worked:
>>
>>NEW FILE.
>>DATASET NAME     Thompson_ToWide.
>>DATASET ACTIVATE Thompson_exampledata.
>>DATASET COPY     Thompson_ToWide.
>>DATASET ACTIVATE Thompson_ToWide.
>>
>>It seems a little clumsy. Is there another, better way?

At 08:54 AM 4/22/2006, Oliver, Richard wrote:

>All you need is the last two commands in your example:
>
>dataset copy newdatasetname. /*make a copy of the active dataset.
>dataset activate newdatasetname. /*activate the copy.

And Richard Oliver is quite right. What I'd missed is that

DATASET COPY <name>.

creates its destination dataset, if that does not exist. (And that is
documented.)