Translating from one data format to another is always tricky and time consuming.
Is the effort of learning the plug-in worth the gain in productivity? Is there a gain in productivity, or are the advantages of a different sort? To these questions, I would answer Yes and Yes. Tedious data manipulation notwithstanding, you can certainly work both applications without a plug-in to connect them. If you need to return data from R back to SPSS, the return journey is more awkward. This method usually works, in the sense that only a few dozen lines of R code are then required to cope with categories, missing values, time variables, and other features that are either lost or damaged in translation.
#Spss 21 run syntax portable
A cleaner way is to save to SPSS Statistics Portable (POR) format from SPSS and open the result by using the read.spss() method from the foreign library. sav format typically opens the file in SPSS, saves it to comma-separated values (CSV) format, and opens the result in R by using the read.csv() method. The low level of interest is not surprising: SPSS users are, more often than not, people who use only SPSS for their data analysis and R users are accustomed to applying ugly hacks as part of doing business with R. It’s something of a well-kept secret, judging from the low level of activity in the R blogosphere on this point.