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selik / xport

Python reader and writer for SAS XPORT data transport files.
MIT License
49 stars 24 forks source link

Just because you do not understand something it does not mean it is "archaic". #91

Closed entropy1177 closed 2 years ago

entropy1177 commented 2 years ago

.XPT files are impossible to work with because they are made to transfer protected health information. Not everybody wants their PHI Open Source.

selik commented 2 years ago

SAS published the SAS Transport (XPT, XPORT) File Format standard. It's openly/publicly available to read the details. This file format does not encrypt or protect information, nor was it made for health information specifically.

Happily, the file format isn't "impossible" to work with, as this project demonstrates.

selik commented 2 years ago

As for whether it's archaic, that depends on your sense of time. IBM's hexadecimal floating-point standard seems almost prehistoric to me. If you think in terms of the UNIX Epoch, it was invented before time zero. In a sense, that's before the beginning of time.