Read multiple *.txt files into Pandas Dataframe with filename as column header

Question

I am trying to import a set of *.txt files. I need to import the files into successive columns of a Pandas DataFrame in Python.

Requirements and Background informati

Answer 1

You can read them into multiple dataframes and concat them together afterwards. Suppose you have two of those files, containing the data shown.

In [6]:
filelist = ['val1.txt', 'val2.txt']
print pd.concat([pd.read_csv(item, names=[item[:-4]]) for item in filelist], axis=1)
    val1  val2
0     16    16
1     54    54
2   -314  -314
3      1     1
4     15    15
5      4     4
6    153   153
7     86    86
8      4     4
9     64    64
10   373   373
11     3     3
12   434   434
13    31    31
14    93    93
15    53    53
16   873   873
17    43    43
18    11    11
19   533   533
20    46    46

Answer 2

You're very close. ijk is the filename already, you don't need to access the list:

# Step 3: Build up DataFrame: df = pd.DataFrame() for ijk in filelist: frame = pd.read_csv(ijk) df = df.append(frame) print df

In the future, please provide working code exactly as is. You import from pandas import * yet then refer to pandas as pd, implying the import import pandas as pd.

You also want to be careful with variable names. files is actually a single file path, and filelist and filesList have no discernible difference from the variable name. It also seems like a bad idea to keep personal documents in your python directory.