R package 'haven' read_spss: how to make it ignore value labels?

Question

I have an SPSS file. I read it in using 'haven' package:

library(haven)
spss1 <- read_spss("SPSS_Example.sav")

I created a function that extracts the long labels (in SPSS - "Label"):

fix_labels <- function(x, TextIfMissing) {
      val <- attr(x, "label")
      if (is.null(val)) TextIfMissing else val
}
longlabels <- sapply(spss1, fix_labels, TextIfMissing = "NO LABLE IN SPSS")

Looks like a little bug in 'haven':

When I actually look at the attributes of one variable that has no long label in SPSS but has Value Labels, I am getting:

attr(spss1$WAVE, "label")
NULL

But when I sapply my function longlabels to my data frame and ask it to print the long labels for each column, for the same column "WAVE" I am getting - instead of NULL:

NULL
VERY/SOMEWHAT FAMILIAR    NOT AT ALL FAMILIAR
                     1                      2

This is, of course, incorrect, because it grabs the next attribute (which one?) and replaces NULL with it.

This function is supposed to create a vector of long labels and usually it does, e.g.:

str(longlabels)
 Named chr [1:64] "Serial number" ...
 - attr(*, "names")= chr [1:64] "Respondent_Serial" "weight" "r7_1" "r7_2" ...

However, I just got an SPSS file with 92 columns and ran exactly the same function on it. Now, I am getting not a vector, but a list

str(longlabels)
List of 92
 $ VEHRATED      : chr "VEHICLE RATED"
 $ RESPID        : chr "RESPONDENT ID"
 $ RESPID8       : chr "8 DIGIT RESPONDENT NUMBER"

An observation about the structure of longlabels here: those columns that do NOT have a long lable in SPSS but DO have Values (value labels) - for them my function grabs their value labels, so that now my long label is recorded as a numeric vector with names, e.g.:

 $ AWARE2        : Named num [1:2] 1 2
  ..- attr(*, "names")= chr [1:2] "VERY/SOMEWHAT FAMILIAR" "NOT AT ALL FAMILIAR"

Question: How could I avoid the extraction of the Value Labels for the columns that have no long labels?

Answer 1

Here is the solution. The problem was partial matching in attr():

fix_labels <- function(x, TextIfMissing) {
      val <- attr(x, "label", exact = TRUE)
      if (is.null(val)) TextIfMissing else val
}