rforeign

rforeign is a software package associated with the R programming language that provides facilities for importing data from other statistical packages and file formats into R. It emerged as part of the effort to bridge data stored outside R with R-based analysis, enabling users to work with datasets created in environments such as SPSS, Stata, SAS, and related formats.

The package focuses on reading a variety of formats commonly used in social sciences and related fields. Typical targets include SPSS portable files, Stata data files, and SAS data sets, along with other legacy or intermediate formats. A key goal of rforeign is to preserve as much of the original metadata as possible, including variable labels, value labels, and the definitions of missing values, while converting data into native R types for subsequent analysis.

In the broader history of R data import, rforeign is often discussed alongside the official foreign package and newer tools that aim to improve reliability and maintenance. Over time, more contemporary approaches have become popular, offering similar import capabilities with modern backends and more active development. As a result, rforeign is frequently described as part of an older generation of data-import utilities, with practitioners encouraged to consider current alternatives for long-term projects.

Usage typically involves installing the package from a distribution repository and using its functions to read data into R data frames, after which standard data manipulation and statistical analysis can proceed. For users seeking contemporary workflows, projects like haven and other modern import tools are commonly recommended as more actively maintained options.