Is there a pandas function to display the first/last n columns, as in .head() & .tail()?

Question

I love using the .head() and .tail() functions in pandas to circumstantially display a certain amount of rows (sometimes I want less, sometimes I want more!). But is there a way to do this with the columns of a DataFrame?

Yes, I know that I can change the display options, as in: pd.set_option('display.max_columns', 20)

But that is too clunky to keep having to change on-the-fly, and anyway, it would only replace the .head() functionality, but not the .tail() functionality.

I also know that this could be done using an accessor: yourDF.iloc[:,:20] to emulate .head(20) and yourDF.iloc[:,-20:] to emulate .tail(20).

It may look like a short amount of code, but honestly it's not as intuitive nor swift as when I use .head().

Does such a command exist? I couldn't find one!

Answer 1

No, such methods are not supplied by Pandas, but it is easy to make these methods yourself:

import pandas as pd
def front(self, n):
    return self.iloc[:, :n]

def back(self, n):
    return self.iloc[:, -n:]

pd.DataFrame.front = front
pd.DataFrame.back = back

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(10, size=(4,10)))

So that now all DataFrame would possess these methods:

In [272]: df.front(4)
Out[272]: 
   0  1  2  3
0  2  5  2  8
1  9  9  1  3
2  7  0  7  4
3  8  3  9  2

In [273]: df.back(3)
Out[273]: 
   7  8  9
0  3  2  7
1  9  9  4
2  5  7  1
3  3  2  5

In [274]: df.front(4).back(2)
Out[274]: 
   2  3
0  2  8
1  1  3
2  7  4
3  9  2

---

If you put the code in a utility module, say, utils_pandas.py, then you can activate it with an import statement:

import utils_pandas

Answer 2

Closest emulation, which you could put in a function:

number_of_columns = 5 # eg.
head_cols = df[df.columns[:number_of_columns]]
tail_cols = df[df.columns[-number_of_columns:]]

Answer 3

Transpose it to use head and go back

df.T.head().T

to avoid index slicing or custom methods.