SEERaBomb (version 2015.2)

pickFields: Pick SEER fields of interest

Description

Reduces the full set of SEER data fields to a smaller set of interest.

Usage

pickFields(sas,picks=c("casenum","reg","race","sex","agedx",
        "yrbrth","seqnum","modx","yrdx","histo3","radiatn","recno",
        "agerec","ICD9","numprims","COD","surv"))

Arguments

sas

A data frame created by getFields() using the SAS file found in the incidence directory of seerHome, the root of the SEER ASCII data installation.

picks

Vector of names of variables of interest. These must be in the same order as found in the input data frame sas, and must at least include the bare minimum of all of the defaults given here.

Value

• The SAS-based input data frame sas, shortened to just the rows of picks, and then expanded to include spacer rows of fields of no interest pooled into single strings: the width of such a spacer row is equal to the distance in bytes between the fields of interest above and below it. This data frame is then used by laf_open_fwf() of LaF in mkSEER() to read the SEER files. Proper use of this function, and of the SEER data in general, requires an understanding of the contents of seerdic.pdf in the incidence directory of seerHome.

Details

R binaries become too large if all of the fields are selected. SEERaBomb is faster than SEER*Stat because it tailors/streamlines the database to your interests.

See Also

SEERaBomb-package, getFields, pickFields, mkSEER

Examples

library(SEERaBomb)
(df=getFields())
(df=pickFields(df))