Function to remove non-alphanumeric characters from a string
keeps hyphens due to their usage in abbreviations/medical terms.
Also uppercase for standardization.
Example:
Function to collect column info for each column to search
Typically ran using the header from the csv reader and is called
inside the initialize_dataset function to do this for each target column.
Example:
Function to get the column index for a given column name
Returns an error if the column name is not found
Typically ran using the header from the csv reader and is called
inside the collect_column_info function to do this for each target column.
Example: