How to select all columns, except one column in pandas?

Question

I have a dataframe look like this:

import pandas
import numpy as np
df = DataFrame(np.random.rand(4,4), columns = list(\'abcd\'))
df
      a         b                


        

Answer 1

Don't use ix. It's deprecated. The most readable and idiomatic way of doing this is df.drop():

>>> df

          a         b         c         d
0  0.175127  0.191051  0.382122  0.869242
1  0.414376  0.300502  0.554819  0.497524
2  0.142878  0.406830  0.314240  0.093132
3  0.337368  0.851783  0.933441  0.949598

>>> df.drop('b', axis=1)

          a         c         d
0  0.175127  0.382122  0.869242
1  0.414376  0.554819  0.497524
2  0.142878  0.314240  0.093132
3  0.337368  0.933441  0.949598

Note that by default, .drop() does not operate inplace; despite the ominous name, df is unharmed by this process. If you want to permanently remove b from df, do df.drop('b', inplace=True).

df.drop() also accepts a list of labels, e.g. df.drop(['a', 'b'], axis=1) will drop column a and b.