Support for factor labels with integer coded factors.

[ralmond]

I have a situation where there saved data in the csv file has integer codes for the factors, but I know the labels I want to use from the codebook.

I would think the way to specify this would be as follows

col_factor(c(Male=0,Female=1))

However, that throws an error.

Error: `levels` must be `NULL` or a character vector:
- `levels` is a 'numeric'

My intention is to feed the column into factor(x, levels=arg, labels=names(arg)), where arg is the argument to col_factor.

I think this would be a generally useful feature, as integer coding of factors (with external code book) is a common practice.

[hadley]

Thanks for filing this issue! Unfortunately, I think it's out of scope for this package: developing good software requires relentless focus, which means that we have to say no to many good ideas. Even though I'm closing this issue, I really appreciate the feedback, and hope you'll continue to contribute in the future 😄