EXPORT DATA exports your ViSta data as a text file containing your data in a form that can be imported into other programs (or into ViSta).

When you export data you will see a standard SAVE dialog box. Use it to identify where you wish to save your data. The exported data specify that they have been exported from ViSta, and specify the data’s name and type, the variable names and types and the observation labels. For matrix data the exported data also identify the matrix names and shapes.

If there are "N" active variables, then all lines in the file contain N+1 values. All of the values on the first two lines of the export file are character strings. Each character string is contained inside double quotes and is followed by a white space separator. 

The first line of the file starts with a string which names the data and identifies ViSta as the exporter (by including "ViSta:" as the first part of the string). The line has N more strings which are used to define variable names. 

The second line of the file begins with a string specifying the datatype and continues with N more strings which define the variable types. 

Each succeeding line of the file begins with an observation label and is followed by the N data values for that observation. There are a total of 2 + NOBS records in the file, where NOBS is the number of observations.

For matrix data each of the data lines begins with a string which is the matrix name. These strings are the same for every row of a matrix, but change from one matrix to the next. The shape of the data are specified by the data type: The datatype "symmetric" means that all matrices are symmetric, whereas the datatype "asymmetric" means that at least one matrix is asymmetric. Row lables are not stated and are formed by concatenating the matrix name with the appropriate variable name.
