How can a column of a dataframe be deleted in Python?

Dataframe is a two dimensional data structure, where data is stored in a tabular format, in the form of rows and columns.

It can be visualized as an SQL data table or an excel sheet representation. A column in a dataframe can be deleted using different methods.

We will see the ‘del’ operator that takes the name of the column that needs to be deleted as a parameter, and deletes it −

Example

 Live Demo

import pandas as pd
my_data = {'ab' : pd.Series([1, 8, 7], index=['a', 'b', 'c']),
'cd' : pd.Series([1, 2, 0, 9], index=['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']),
'ef' : pd.Series([56, 78, 32],index=['a','b','c']),
'gh' : pd.Series([66, 77, 88, 99],index=['a','b','c', 'd']) }
my_df = pd.DataFrame(my_data)
print("The dataframe is :")
print(my_df)
print("Deleting the column using the 'del' operator")
del my_df['cd']
print(my_df)

Output

The dataframe is :
   ab   cd  ef    gh
a  1.0  1   56.0  66
b  8.0  2   78.0  77
c  7.0  0   32.0  88
d  NaN  9   NaN   99
Deleting the column using the 'del' operator
    ab  ef     gh
a  1.0  56.0   66
b  8.0  78.0   77
c  7.0  32.0   88
d  NaN  NaN   99

Explanation

• The required libraries are imported, and given alias names for ease of use.

• Dictionary values consisting of key and value is created, wherein a value is actually a series data structure.

• This dictionary is later passed as a parameter to the ‘Dataframe’ function present in the ‘pandas’ library

• The ‘del’ keyword is used to delete a specific column.

• The name of the column that needs to be deleted is passed as a parameter to the ‘del’ operator.

• The new dataframe is printed on the console.

Note − The word ‘NaN’ refers to ‘Not a Number’, which means that specific [row,col] value doesn’t have any valid entry.