How to rearrange Pandas column sequence?

Question

>>> df =DataFrame({\'a\':[1,2,3,4],\'b\':[2,4,6,8]})
>>> df[\'x\']=df.a + df.b
>>> df[\'y\']=df.a - df.b
>>> df
   a  b   x  y
0          


        

Answer 1

There may be an elegant built-in function (but I haven't found it yet). You could write one:

# reorder columns
def set_column_sequence(dataframe, seq, front=True):
    '''Takes a dataframe and a subsequence of its columns,
       returns dataframe with seq as first columns if "front" is True,
       and seq as last columns if "front" is False.
    '''
    cols = seq[:] # copy so we don't mutate seq
    for x in dataframe.columns:
        if x not in cols:
            if front: #we want "seq" to be in the front
                #so append current column to the end of the list
                cols.append(x)
            else:
                #we want "seq" to be last, so insert this
                #column in the front of the new column list
                #"cols" we are building:
                cols.insert(0, x)
return dataframe[cols]

For your example: set_column_sequence(df, ['x','y']) would return the desired output.

If you want the seq at the end of the DataFrame instead simply pass in "front=False".