R input from .dat and .sps files

Question

I am trying to import data into R using .dat and .sps files. The .dat file has no headers and different column lengths, which, of course, are included in the .sps file. It also contains missing values. I tried using spss.fixed.file from the spss.fixed.file package, but when I specify it as:

 x=spss.fixed.file(file=data.dat,columns.file=input.sps,varlab.file=input.sps) 

and I get the following error:

Error in spss.parse.variable.labels (varlab.file): too many variable label statuses

Has anyone used this command / package before? I can’t understand whether it will be the same for both the columns.file file and the varla.file file, since all this information is included in the same .sps file. Any help would be greatly appreciated!