How to select non-zero columns in a matrix in python

Question

Suppose I have data with following format:

C0 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8
0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0
0  0  2  3  4  5  6  0  0
0  1  4  5  6  7  8  0  0
0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0  0

I want to select non-zero columns, such that column C1, C2, C3, C4, C5, C6 in python. Any command that can directly give me desired format.

Answer 1

You can use any along with numpy indexing to select columns with non-zero values.

Setup

a = np.array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
              [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
              [0, 0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 0, 0],
              [0, 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 0, 0],
              [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]], dtype=int64)

---

a[:, a.any(0)]

array([[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
       [0, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6],
       [1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8],
       [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]], dtype=int64)

Answer 2

If you use a library like pandas then it is way more simpler

You just take mean of each column and if they are greater than 0 they are your required columns

For that I will give you a piece of code:

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("File Path")
a = df.mean(axis=0) #gives you column wise mean
for i in len(a):
   if a[i] > 0:
      print(i)  # i will be your column