read_data_file() reads a data file and processes it based on the provided metadata
and codes dictionary. The processing depends on the metadata scenario, which
includes cases like "single", "single_multiple", and "single_multiple_single".
For certain scenarios, the function utilizes read.csv to infer column
types without explicit specification.
Arguments
- file
A character string specifying the path to the data file.
- metadata
A list containing the scenario and variable information obtained from the metadata file using
process_metadata_file.- dict
A data frame containing codes dictionary information.
Details
read_data_file() reads the data file and applies necessary processing based
on the metadata scenario. For scenarios like "single" and "single_multiple", it
uses read.csv for convenient type inference. For "single_multiple_single",
it reads the file line by line, collapses every (N_CODES + 2) lines, and then reads
the collapsed lines using read.table.