Understanding inplace=True

Question

In the pandas library many times there is an option to change the object inplace such as with the following statement...

df.dropna(axis=\'index\         


        

Answer 1

When inplace=True is passed, the data is renamed in place (it returns nothing), so you'd use:

df.an_operation(inplace=True)

When inplace=False is passed (this is the default value, so isn't necessary), performs the operation and returns a copy of the object, so you'd use:

df = df.an_operation(inplace=False)