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

Let's Understand renaming by a small example...

1.Renaming columns using mapping:

df = pd.DataFrame({"A": [1, 2, 3], "B": [4, 5, 6]}) #creating a df with column name A and B
df.rename({"A": "new_a", "B": "new_b"},axis='columns',inplace =True) #renaming column A with 'new_a' and B with 'new_b'

output:
   new_a  new_b
0  1       4
1  2       5
2  3       6

2.Renaming index/Row_Name using mapping:

df.rename({0: "x", 1: "y", 2: "z"},axis='index',inplace =True) #Row name are getting replaced by 'x','y','z'.

output:
       new_a  new_b
    x  1       4
    y  2       5
    z  3       6

Answer 2

Note that these approach do not work for a MultiIndex. For a MultiIndex, you need to do something like the following:

>>> df = pd.DataFrame({('$a','$x'):[1,2], ('$b','$y'): [3,4], ('e','f'):[5,6]})
>>> df
   $a $b  e
   $x $y  f
0  1  3  5
1  2  4  6
>>> rename = {('$a','$x'):('a','x'), ('$b','$y'):('b','y')}
>>> df.columns = pandas.MultiIndex.from_tuples([
        rename.get(item, item) for item in df.columns.tolist()])
>>> df
   a  b  e
   x  y  f
0  1  3  5
1  2  4  6

Answer 3

df.columns = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e']

It will replace the existing names with the names you provide, in the order you provide.

Answer 4

Real simple just use

df.columns = ['Name1', 'Name2', 'Name3'...]

and it will assign the column names by the order you put them

Answer 5

Here's a nifty little function I like to use to cut down on typing:

def rename(data, oldnames, newname): 
    if type(oldnames) == str: #input can be a string or list of strings 
        oldnames = [oldnames] #when renaming multiple columns 
        newname = [newname] #make sure you pass the corresponding list of new names
    i = 0 
    for name in oldnames:
        oldvar = [c for c in data.columns if name in c]
        if len(oldvar) == 0: 
            raise ValueError("Sorry, couldn't find that column in the dataset")
        if len(oldvar) > 1: #doesn't have to be an exact match 
            print("Found multiple columns that matched " + str(name) + " :")
            for c in oldvar:
                print(str(oldvar.index(c)) + ": " + str(c))
            ind = input('please enter the index of the column you would like to rename: ')
            oldvar = oldvar[int(ind)]
        if len(oldvar) == 1:
            oldvar = oldvar[0]
        data = data.rename(columns = {oldvar : newname[i]})
        i += 1 
    return data   

Here is an example of how it works:

In [2]: df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(0,10,size=(10, 4)), columns=['col1','col2','omg','idk'])
#first list = existing variables
#second list = new names for those variables
In [3]: df = rename(df, ['col','omg'],['first','ohmy']) 
Found multiple columns that matched col :
0: col1
1: col2

please enter the index of the column you would like to rename: 0

In [4]: df.columns
Out[5]: Index(['first', 'col2', 'ohmy', 'idk'], dtype='object')

Answer 6

Another way we could replace the original column labels is by stripping the unwanted characters (here '$') from the original column labels.

This could have been done by running a for loop over df.columns and appending the stripped columns to df.columns.

Instead , we can do this neatly in a single statement by using list comprehension like below:

df.columns = [col.strip('$') for col in df.columns]

(strip method in Python strips the given character from beginning and end of the string.)