Thank you Rohit. I have seen those. And I should have said that and included links to them as well.
What I do not see is mentioned on those pages is a reference to the term "Rules" and "Options" that is mentioned on the Import page under "Elements supported by all formats".
It is possible, perhaps even likely, that the "Rules" and "Options" elements are covered, but just not called "Rules" and "Options" elsewhere. If that is the case, then it would be great if the documentation were more consistent in what it calls things.
To answer your question about what specific problem am I trying to solve. I have some large datasets that have columns that I would like to specify how they are treated. For example:
- Some columns are identifiers that are strings of digits that are too long to be treated as a number, and should remain as a string. Of course, there are other fields that are strings of digits that should be treated as numbers.
- Some files have columns that are dates and other columns that are date times. I would like to bring them both in appropriately. So specifying a DateStringFormat for the entire file does not work (unless I'm missing something)
- Some text column need to be trimmed. I know I can do this after the fact, but it would be great to do it all at once, if possible
- etc.
I know I can consider using SemanticImport, but I'd rather avoid the performance penalty.
Regardless of what my immediate need is, I am more concerned with learning the language. So, even if there is another way to meet this particular need, I still want to understand what "Rules" and "Options" the documentation is referring to here.
Thanks