datafile: Searches for a file in a local data repository
In mkesslerct/opadar: Useful functions for the daily operations of the OPADA, UPCT.

Description Usage Arguments Details Value Examples

Searches for file in the sequence of data repositories specified as strings in the variable datapath. Returns the path to file as a string tipically for use in input functions (read.table, etc...)

1	datafile(file, literal = FALSE)

`file`	String. The name of the file to search for in the data repositories.
`literal`	A logical scalar. Should the file be searched in the data repositories or just locally? If TRUE, just returns `file`.

datafile searches for file first in the first component of the vector datapath. If it finds it, it returns the concatenation of datapath[1] and file. If it does not, it looks for file in the second component of datapath, returns the concatenation of datapath[2] and file. If literal = TRUE, it just returns file without checking whether file exists in the current directory. If file is not found in any of the directories specified in datapath and literal = FALSE, a message error is thrown and the execution is stopped.

The path to the datarepositories in datapath should end with "/". For example datapath <- "~/OPADA/data/".

The output is a string that contains the path to file in one of the data repository specified in datapath. If literal = TRUE, it just returns file.

## defines two data repositories
datapath <- c("~/OPADA/data/", "./data/)

\dontrun
{
datafile("mydata.txt")
}
## In the case when "mydata.txt" is not found in "~OPADA/data/" but is located
## in "./data/":
## > "./data/mydata.txt

## In the case when "mydata.txt" is not to be found in any of the datadirectories
## specified in \code{datapath}
## Error in datafile("brout") :
## Unable to find file  brout in any of the folders specified by datapath.

## With \code{literal = TRUE}, returns the argument \code{file} without checking
## whether it exists.
datafile("mydata.txt", literal = TRUE)