ABSTRACT
An ASCII file is just a text file and the fixed-width part means that each row has the exact same number of characters. Each fixed-width ASCII file comes with what is called a “setup” file, which is some code that tells the program criminologists are reading the data into how to separate columns and when to replace the numbers that indicate the state with the actual state name. This chapter presents some files, which are available for download: fatal-police-shootings-data.csv, fatal-police-shootings-data.dta, fatal-police-shootings-data.sas, fatal-police-shootings-data.sav, sqf-2019.xlsx, sf_neighborhoods_suicide.rda, and shr_1976_2020.rds. Many data sets, particularly older government data, will not come as. rda or. rds files but rather as Excel, Stata, SAS, SPSS, or fixed-width ASCII files. The chapter covers how to read these formats into R as well as how to save data into these formats.
