Python script to import .sps files

In a post about voting locations (in Dutch) I grumbled a bit about inconsistencies in how Statistics Netherlands (CBS) spells the names of municipalities and why don’t they include the municipality codes in their data exports. This afternoon, someone who works at CBS responded on Twitter. She had asked around and found a workaround: download the data as SPSS. Thanks!

CBS offers the option to download data as an SPSS syntax file (.sps). I wasn’t familiar with this filetype, I don’t have SPSS and I couldn’t immediately find a package to import this filetype. But it turns out that .sps files are just text files, so I wrote a little script that does the job.

Note that it’s not super fast; there may be more efficient ways to do the job. Also, I’ve only tested it on a few CBS data files. I’m not sure it’ll work correctly if all variables have labels or if the file contains not just data but also statistical analysis.

That said, you can find the script here.