SPSS Statistics

Hello,

I have a large number of variables I want to rename using their labels. For example, I have V1, V2, and V3 with labels "Number of Laps," "Time to Complete," and "Age," respectively. Is there a way to systematically rename V1 to V3 by referencing their labels WITHOUT spelling out what the specific names should be? E.g., I want to rename V1 = Number_of_Laps, but I don't want to specify "Number_of_Laps," instead just referencing "V1's label, whatever it may be."

Thanks!

Alexa

Bear in mind that variable labels are not necessarily valid as variable names even ignoring the space issue.  They might also be duplicates, since labels don't have to be unique.  And some variables might not have labels or some labels might conflict with existing variable names.

However, ignoring those issues, you can do the renaming like this.

begin program python.
import spssaux

vardict = spssaux.VariableDict("V1 to V3")
for v in vardict:
    vlabel = v.VariableLabel.replace(" ", "_")
    if vlabel:
        spss.Submit(f"""RENAME VARIABLES ({v.VariableName} = {vlabel})""") 
end program.

If  you want to rename all labelled variables, just omit "V1 to V3" above.