The CategoricalArray constructor and the categorical function from CategoricalArrays.jl seem to be nearly identical in behavior:
julia> using CategoricalArrays
julia> x = CategoricalArray(["a", "b", "c"]; ordered=true, levels=["c", "b", "a"])
3-element CategoricalArray{String,1,UInt32}:
"a"
"b"
"c"
julia> y = categorical(["a", "b", "c"]; ordered=true, levels=["c", "b", "a"])
3-element CategoricalArray{String,1,UInt32}:
"a"
"b"
"c"
julia> x == y
true
Is there any notable difference between CategoricalArray and categorical? If they're basically the same, then what's the reason for including the redundant categorical function?