How to delete a column from a data frame with pandas?

Question

I read my data

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv(\'/path/file.tsv\', header=0, delimiter=\'\\t\')
print df

and get:

Answer 1

The best way to delete a column in pandas is to use drop:

df = df.drop('column_name', axis=1)

where 1 is the axis number (0 for rows and 1 for columns.)

To delete the column without having to reassign df you can do:

df.drop('column_name', axis=1, inplace=True)

Finally, to drop by column number instead of by column label, try this. To delete, e.g. the 1st, 2nd and 4th columns:

df.drop(df.columns[[0, 1, 3]], axis=1)  # df.columns is zero-based pd.Index 

Exceptions:

If a wrong column number or label is requested an error will be thrown. To check the number of columns use df.shape[1] or len(df.columns.values) and to check the column labels use df.columns.values.

An exception would be raised answer was based on @LondonRob's answer and left here to help future visitors of this page.