Mplus Users Guide v6.. - Muthén & Muthén

OUTPUT, SAVEDATA, And PLOT CommandsMNAMESThe MNAMES option is used to assign names to the variables in thedata set named using the MFILE option of the SAVEDATA command.The variable names can be separated by blanks or commas and can be upto 8 characters in length. Variable names must begin with a letter. Theycan contain only letters, numbers, and the underscore symbol. Theprogram makes no distinction between upper and lower case letters.Following is an example of how the MNAMES option is specified:MNAMES ARE id gender ethnic income educatn drink_st agedrink;The ID variable from the IDVARIABLE option of the VARIABLEcommand must be one of the variables listed in the MNAMES statement,Variable names are generated if a list of variables is specified using theMNAMES option. For example,MNAMES ARE y1-y5 x1-x3;generates the variable names y1 y2 y3 y4 y5 x1 x2 x3.MNAMES ARE itema-itemd;generates the variable names itema itemb itemc itemd.MFORMATThe MFORMAT option is used to describe the format of the data set tobe merged with the analysis data set. Individual data can be in fixed orfree format. Free format is the default. Fixed format is recommendedfor large data sets because it is faster to read data using a fixed format.For data in free format, each entry on a record must be delimited by acomma, space, or tab. When data are in free format, the use of blanks isnot allowed. The number of variables in the data set is determined frominformation provided in the MNAMES option of the SAVEDATAcommand. Data are read until the number of pieces of information equalto the number of variables is found. The program then goes to the nextrecord to begin reading information for the next observation. A data setcan contain no more than 500 variables.677