How do I delete a column from a Pandas DataFrame?
We can do this using the DataFrame.drop
method:
import pandas # DataFrame with three columns products = pandas.DataFrame([["apple", 1, 2], ["orange", 3, 4], ["pear", 5, 6]], columns=["product", "cost_price", "sale_price"]) print(products) # Remove the sale_price column products.drop('sale_price', axis=1, inplace=True) print(products)
This code will print the products
DataFrame with three columns and then with two columns. We’ve used the following arguments in our drop
method call:
'sale_price'
is the name of the column to remove. We could also provide a column index (e.g. 2
) or a list of indices or names to delete multiple columns.axis=1
indicates that we should remove a column (axis=0
will attempt to remove a row).inplace=True
tells the method to modify the current products
DataFrame rather than returning a new one with the column removed. Without this argument, we would have to reassign products
as below:products = products.drop('sale_price', axis=1)