pandas: best way to select all columns whose names start with X

Question

I have a DataFrame:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame({\'foo.aa\': [1, 2.1, np.nan, 4.7, 5.6, 6.8],
                   \'foo.fighters         


        

Answer 1

Another option for the selection of the desired entries is to use map:

df.loc[(df == 1).any(axis=1), df.columns.map(lambda x: x.startswith('foo'))]

which gives you all the columns for rows that contain a 1:

   foo.aa  foo.bars  foo.fighters  foo.fox foo.manchu
0     1.0         0             0        2         NA
1     2.1         0             1        4          0
2     NaN         0           NaN        1          0
5     6.8         1             0        5          0

The row selection is done by

(df == 1).any(axis=1)

as in @ajcr's answer which gives you:

0     True
1     True
2     True
3    False
4    False
5     True
dtype: bool

meaning that row 3 and 4 do not contain a 1 and won't be selected.

The selection of the columns is done using Boolean indexing like this:

df.columns.map(lambda x: x.startswith('foo'))

In the example above this returns

array([False,  True,  True,  True,  True,  True, False], dtype=bool)

So, if a column does not start with foo, False is returned and the column is therefore not selected.

If you just want to return all rows that contain a 1 - as your desired output suggests - you can simply do

df.loc[(df == 1).any(axis=1)]

which returns

   bar.baz  foo.aa  foo.bars  foo.fighters  foo.fox foo.manchu nas.foo
0      5.0     1.0         0             0        2         NA      NA
1      5.0     2.1         0             1        4          0       0
2      6.0     NaN         0           NaN        1          0       1
5      6.8     6.8         1             0        5          0       0