What is the meaning of “axis” attribute in a Pandas DataFrame?

Question

Taking the following example:

>>> df1 = pd.DataFrame({\"x\":[1, 2, 3, 4, 5], 
                        \"y\":[3, 4, 5, 6, 7]}, 
                      ind         


        

Answer 1

Data:

In [55]: df1
Out[55]:
   x  y
a  1  3
b  2  4
c  3  5
d  4  6
e  5  7

In [56]: df2
Out[56]:
   y  z
b  1  9
c  3  8
d  5  7
e  7  6
f  9  5

Concatenated horizontally (axis=1), using index elements found in both DFs (aligned by indexes for joining):

In [57]: pd.concat([df1, df2], join='inner', axis=1)
Out[57]:
   x  y  y  z
b  2  4  1  9
c  3  5  3  8
d  4  6  5  7
e  5  7  7  6

Concatenated vertically (DEFAULT: axis=0), using columns found in both DFs:

In [58]: pd.concat([df1, df2], join='inner')
Out[58]:
   y
a  3
b  4
c  5
d  6
e  7
b  1
c  3
d  5
e  7
f  9

If you don't use the inner join method - you will have it this way:

In [62]: pd.concat([df1, df2])
Out[62]:
     x  y    z
a  1.0  3  NaN
b  2.0  4  NaN
c  3.0  5  NaN
d  4.0  6  NaN
e  5.0  7  NaN
b  NaN  1  9.0
c  NaN  3  8.0
d  NaN  5  7.0
e  NaN  7  6.0
f  NaN  9  5.0

In [63]: pd.concat([df1, df2], axis=1)
Out[63]:
     x    y    y    z
a  1.0  3.0  NaN  NaN
b  2.0  4.0  1.0  9.0
c  3.0  5.0  3.0  8.0
d  4.0  6.0  5.0  7.0
e  5.0  7.0  7.0  6.0
f  NaN  NaN  9.0  5.0