applying formats using fetch or to_frame makes all DataFrame columns objects

[pestyld]

If you have formats on only a few columns in a CAS table and try to apply the formats to the SASDataFrame, the swat package converts all columns to objects, even if the column is a simple number.

For example:

Packages

import swat
import pandas as pd

Connect to CAS

conn = ##connection info

load data to CAS

data = r'https://support.sas.com/documentation/onlinedoc/viya/exampledatasets/cars.csv'
tbl = conn.upload_file(data,
casout = {'name':'cars_upload', 'caslib':'casuser','replace':True},
importoptions={
'stripBlanks':True,
'guessRows':200,
'vars':{
'MSRP':{'format':'dollar16.'},
'Weight':{'format':'comma16.'}
}})

Only the MSRP and Weight columns have a format

tbl.columnInfo()

Pull the CAS table to the client as a SASDataFrame and apply the formats. This works as expected

df = tbl.to_frame(format=True)
df.head()

View the data types of the SASDataFrame

Everything turns into an object. It seems like only the formatted columns should be converted. Numeric columns without formats should remain numbers.