pandas three-way joining multiple dataframes on columns

Question

I have 3 CSV files. Each has the first column as the (string) names of people, while all the other columns in each dataframe are attributes of that person.

How can

Answer 1

This is an ideal situation for the join method

The join method is built exactly for these types of situations. You can join any number of DataFrames together with it. The calling DataFrame joins with the index of the collection of passed DataFrames. To work with multiple DataFrames, you must put the joining columns in the index.

The code would look something like this:

filenames = ['fn1', 'fn2', 'fn3', 'fn4',....]
dfs = [pd.read_csv(filename, index_col=index_col) for filename in filenames)]
dfs[0].join(dfs[1:])

With @zero's data, you could do this:

df1 = pd.DataFrame(np.array([
    ['a', 5, 9],
    ['b', 4, 61],
    ['c', 24, 9]]),
    columns=['name', 'attr11', 'attr12'])
df2 = pd.DataFrame(np.array([
    ['a', 5, 19],
    ['b', 14, 16],
    ['c', 4, 9]]),
    columns=['name', 'attr21', 'attr22'])
df3 = pd.DataFrame(np.array([
    ['a', 15, 49],
    ['b', 4, 36],
    ['c', 14, 9]]),
    columns=['name', 'attr31', 'attr32'])

dfs = [df1, df2, df3]
dfs = [df.set_index('name') for df in dfs]
dfs[0].join(dfs[1:])

     attr11 attr12 attr21 attr22 attr31 attr32
name                                          
a         5      9      5     19     15     49
b         4     61     14     16      4     36
c        24      9      4      9     14      9