Pandas read_csv without knowing whether header is present

Question

I have an input file with known columns, let\'s say two columns Name and Sex. Sometimes it has the header line Name,Sex, and sometimes it

Answer 1

using new feature - selection by callable:

cols = ['Name','Sex']

df = (pd.read_csv(filename, header=None, names=cols)
      [lambda x: np.ones(len(x)).astype(bool)
                 if (x.iloc[0] != cols).all()
                 else np.concatenate([[False], np.ones(len(x)-1).astype(bool)])]
)

using .query() method:

df = (pd.read_csv(filename, header=None, names=cols)
        .query('Name != "Name" and Sex != "Sex"'))

i'm not sure that this is the most elegant way, but this should work as well:

df = pd.read_csv(filename, header=None, names=cols)

if (df.iloc[0] == cols).all():
    df = df[1:].reset_index(drop=True)