Is it possible to read categorical columns with pandas' read_csv?
I have tried passing the dtype parameter with read_csv as dtype={n: pandas.Categorical} but this does not work properly (the result is an Object). The manual is unclear . In version 0.19.0 you can use parameter dtype='category' in read_csv : data = 'col1,col2,col3\na,b,1\na,b,2\nc,d,3' df = pd.read_csv(pd.compat.StringIO(data), dtype='category') print (df) col1 col2 col3 0 a b 1 1 a b 2 2 c d 3 print (df.dtypes) col1 category col2 category col3 category dtype: object If want specify column for category use dtype with dictionary: df = pd.read_csv(pd.compat.StringIO(data), dtype={'col1':