Read a DBC file

Decompresses a DataSUS DBC file to a temporary DBF file and reads it into a tibble. Use this function for a DBC file already available locally; use fetch_datasus() to discover and download files from DataSUS.

Usage

read_dbc(file, as_character = TRUE)

Arguments

file

A single character string with the path to a readable, non-empty DBC file.

as_character

If TRUE (the default), converts every column to character. If FALSE, preserves the types inferred from the DBF metadata.

Value

A tibble with one column per DBF field. By default, all columns are character vectors; with as_character = FALSE, DBF-inferred types are retained.

Details

Decompression is performed through the package's bundled DBC implementation. The intermediate DBF file is created in the R temporary directory and removed before the function returns or aborts. The implementation was adapted from the healthbR package.

Invalid input files, decompression failures, and DBF reading failures abort with errors in the microdatasus_dbc_error family.

References

Saldanha, R. F. (2026). Sistemas de Informação em Saúde no Brasil.

See also

fetch_datasus()