Compare Multiple Columns to Get Rows that are Different in Two Pandas Dataframes

Question

I have two dataframes:

df1=
    A    B   C
0   A0   B0  C0
1   A1   B1  C1
2   A2   B2  C2

df2=
    A    B   C
0   A2   B2  C10
1   A1   B3  C11
2   A9   B4         


        

Answer 1

If your version is 0.17.0 then you can use pd.merge and pass the cols of interest, how='left' and set indicator=True to whether the values are only present in left or both. You can then test whether the appended _merge col is equal to 'both':

In [102]:
pd.merge(df1, df2, on='A',how='left', indicator=True)['_merge'] == 'both'

Out[102]:
0    False
1     True
2     True
Name: _merge, dtype: bool

In [103]:
pd.merge(df1, df2, on=['A', 'B'],how='left', indicator=True)['_merge'] == 'both'

Out[103]:
0    False
1    False
2     True
Name: _merge, dtype: bool

output from the merge:

In [104]:
pd.merge(df1, df2, on='A',how='left', indicator=True)

Out[104]:
    A B_x C_x  B_y  C_y     _merge
0  A0  B0  C0  NaN  NaN  left_only
1  A1  B1  C1   B3  C11       both
2  A2  B2  C2   B2  C10       both

In [105]:    
pd.merge(df1, df2, on=['A', 'B'],how='left', indicator=True)

Out[105]:
    A   B C_x  C_y     _merge
0  A0  B0  C0  NaN  left_only
1  A1  B1  C1  NaN  left_only
2  A2  B2  C2  C10       both