Renaming columns in pandas

Question

I have a DataFrame using pandas and column labels that I need to edit to replace the original column labels.

I\'d like to change the column names in a DataFrame

Answer 1

df = pd.DataFrame({'$a': [1], '$b': [1], '$c': [1], '$d': [1], '$e': [1]})

If your new list of columns is in the same order as the existing columns, the assignment is simple:

new_cols = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']
df.columns = new_cols
>>> df
   a  b  c  d  e
0  1  1  1  1  1

If you had a dictionary keyed on old column names to new column names, you could do the following:

d = {'$a': 'a', '$b': 'b', '$c': 'c', '$d': 'd', '$e': 'e'}
df.columns = df.columns.map(lambda col: d[col])  # Or `.map(d.get)` as pointed out by @PiRSquared.
>>> df
   a  b  c  d  e
0  1  1  1  1  1

If you don't have a list or dictionary mapping, you could strip the leading $ symbol via a list comprehension:

df.columns = [col[1:] if col[0] == '$' else col for col in df]