permutedims with CategoricalArray

[bkamins]

@nalimilan - currently in

DataFrames.jl/src/abstractdataframe/reshape.jl

Line 645 in 2f5536e

eltype(df[!, src_namescol]) <: SymbolOrString ||

we allow column that is to be converted to column names to be only string or Symbol. This is, in particular, problematic with CategoricalArrays.jl.

What do you think we should do with it? Should we just automatically convert any non-string or symbol value to string or e.g. add strict::Bool=true kwarg, which by default is the current behavior, but if strict=false we perform conversion to string?

[nalimilan]

Maybe we could first try converting to string, as that's quite safe? Then if users pass strict=false we could call string on the values, which would be more risky to do by default.

[bkamins]

you mean in try-catch or checking if eltype can be converted to String?

[nalimilan]

try... catch. Detecting conversion from the eltype is difficult or impossible.

[bkamins]

I agree, that is why I asked 😄.