Why does Sparkflows rename or suffix my column names automatically?

FAQs
1

Column names are:

  • Renamed

  • Suffixed (_1, _2)

  • Auto-generated (F1, F2)

Why this happens

Sparkflows guarantees:

  • Valid column identifiers

  • Unique column names

  • Schema-safe output

It automatically:

  • Pads missing headers

  • Replaces empty headers with F#

  • Deduplicates duplicate names

  • Optionally cleans special characters

Example:

Amount, Amount, <blank>

Becomes:

Amount, Amount_1, F3

Why this is required

Spark and SQL require:

  • Unique column names

  • Non-empty identifiers

Recommendation

Clean headers in Excel if exact names matter,
or disable column name cleaning when appropriate.