- Use ``categorical_feature`` to specify the categorical features.
Refer to the parameter ``categorical_feature`` in `Parameters <./Parameters.rst#categorical_feature>`__.
- Categorical features will be cast to ``int32`` so they must be encoded as non-negative integers (negative values will be treated as missing)
- Categorical features will be cast to ``int32`` (integer codes will be extracted from pandas categoricals in the Python-package) so they must be encoded as non-negative integers (negative values will be treated as missing)
less than ``Int32.MaxValue`` (2147483647).
It is best to use a contiguous range of integers started from zero.
Floating point numbers in categorical features will be rounded towards 0.
