Is there a pandas function to display the first/last n columns, as in .head() & .tail()?

Question

I love using the .head() and .tail() functions in pandas to circumstantially display a certain amount of rows (sometimes I want less, sometimes I w

Answer 1

You can just put a number inside brackets which will show n first/last number of rows in your dataframe.

df.head(10)

You can even put a lower number than the default (if you want too).

df.head(2)

Answer 2

No, such methods are not supplied by Pandas, but it is easy to make these methods yourself:

import pandas as pd
def front(self, n):
    return self.iloc[:, :n]

def back(self, n):
    return self.iloc[:, -n:]

pd.DataFrame.front = front
pd.DataFrame.back = back

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(10, size=(4,10)))

So that now all DataFrame would possess these methods:

In [272]: df.front(4)
Out[272]: 
   0  1  2  3
0  2  5  2  8
1  9  9  1  3
2  7  0  7  4
3  8  3  9  2

In [273]: df.back(3)
Out[273]: 
   7  8  9
0  3  2  7
1  9  9  4
2  5  7  1
3  3  2  5

In [274]: df.front(4).back(2)
Out[274]: 
   2  3
0  2  8
1  1  3
2  7  4
3  9  2

---

If you put the code in a utility module, say, utils_pandas.py, then you can activate it with an import statement:

import utils_pandas

Answer 3

Transpose it to use head and go back

df.T.head().T

to avoid index slicing or custom methods.

Answer 4

You could just use df.col.head(n) for what your are trying to do... see example below,

df = pd.DataFrame({'a': [i for i in range(101)],
                   'b': [i for i in range(101)]})
df.a.head(4)

Out[37]:
0    0
1    1
2    2
3    3
Name: a, dtype: int64

Answer 5

Closest emulation, which you could put in a function:

number_of_columns = 5 # eg.
head_cols = df[df.columns[:number_of_columns]]
tail_cols = df[df.columns[-number_of_columns:]]