python dataframe pandas drop column using int

Question

I understand that to drop a column you use df.drop('column name', axis=1). Is there a way to drop a column using a numerical index instead of the column name?

Answer 1

You can delete column on i index like this:

df.drop(df.columns[i], axis=1) 

It could work strange, if you have duplicate names in columns, so to do this you can rename column you want to delete column by new name. Or you can reassign DataFrame like this:

df = df.iloc[:, [j for j, c in enumerate(df.columns) if j != i]] 

Answer 2

Drop multiple columns like this:

cols = [1,2,4,5,12] df.drop(df.columns[cols],axis=1,inplace=True) 

inplace=True is used to make the changes in the dataframe itself without doing the column dropping on a copy of the data frame. If you need to keep your original intact, use:

df_after_dropping = df.drop(df.columns[cols],axis=1)