title: Python sas7bdat module usage
body: <p>I have to dump data from SAS datasets.  I found a Python module called sas7bdat.py that says it can read SAS .sas7bdat datasets, and I think it would be simpler and more straightforward to do the project in Python rather than SAS due to the other functionality required.  However, the help(sas7bdat) in interactive Python is not very useful and the only example I was able to find to dump a dataset is as follows:</p>
  
  <pre><code>import sas7bdat
  from sas7bdat import *
  # following line is sas dataset to convert
  foo = SAS7BDAT('/support/sas/locked_data.sas7bdat')
  #following line is txt file to create
  foo.convertFile('/support/textfiles/locked_data.txt','\t')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This doesn't do what I want because a) it uses the SAS variable names as column headers and I need it to use the variable labels, and b) it uses "nan" to denote missing numeric values where I'd rather just leave the value blank.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone point me to some useful documentation on the methods included in sas7bdat.py?  I've Googled every permutation of key words that I could think of, with no luck.  If not, can someone give me an example or two of using readColumnAttributes(), readColumnLabels(), and/or readColumnNames()?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks, all. </p>