Currently, there is a lot of overhead built into fread_bls() which slows down the processing of large data sets. This overhead was intended to address occasional issues with BLS files (e.g. a column of intermittent data which is missing a column name in the middle of the file, creating an error with subsequent column names). However, it is now the largest delay in using functions like get_oews() because cleaning a large file takes noticeable time (even if the file is cached and the series file is not used in mapping).
Proposed enhancement would add an optional argument which would invoke a streamlined fread_bls() which reads the table without the extra cleaning and verification steps. Those steps should remain, particularly for files with unknown structure, as they add more value for data exploration (e.g. load_bls_dataset())
Currently, there is a lot of overhead built into fread_bls() which slows down the processing of large data sets. This overhead was intended to address occasional issues with BLS files (e.g. a column of intermittent data which is missing a column name in the middle of the file, creating an error with subsequent column names). However, it is now the largest delay in using functions like get_oews() because cleaning a large file takes noticeable time (even if the file is cached and the series file is not used in mapping).
Proposed enhancement would add an optional argument which would invoke a streamlined fread_bls() which reads the table without the extra cleaning and verification steps. Those steps should remain, particularly for files with unknown structure, as they add more value for data exploration (e.g. load_bls_dataset())