code: def convert_cols_to_list(cols):
      if isinstance(cols, pd.Series):
          return cols.tolist()
      elif isinstance(cols, np.ndarray):
          return cols.tolist()
      elif np.isscalar(cols):
          return [cols]
      elif isinstance(cols, set):
          return list(cols)
      elif isinstance(cols, tuple):
          return list(cols)
      elif isinstance(cols, CategoricalDtype):
          return cols.astype(object).tolist()
  
      return cols
  
imports: from abc import abstractmethod
  from enum import Enum, auto
  import warnings
  import pandas
  import numpy
  import sklearn.base
  from pandas.api.types import is_object_dtype, is_string_dtype, is_numeric_dtype
  from pandas.core.dtypes.dtypes import CategoricalDtype
  from sklearn.base import BaseEstimator, TransformerMixin
  from sklearn.exceptions import NotFittedError
  from typing import Dict, List, Optional, Union
  from scipy.sparse import csr_matrix
  from sklearn.preprocessing import LabelEncoder
label_desc: Use image node_id 1 for calling a global function with example usage: convert_cols_to_list(cols) and returns: cols, cols, cols, list, list, list, cols