Remove columns which match some pattern in python

Question

I have a large csv files which have several columns as follows:

M_15_19_yr_	M_19_25_yr_	M_25_35_yr_
20	34	12
09	21	19

I want to remove such columns which start from M_{age1}_{age2}_yr. I tried using:

df = df.loc[:, ~df.columns.str.startswith(('M_15_19_yr_','M_19_25_yr_','M_25_35_yr_'))

However, I have many such columns. How do I remove all of such columns without explicitly writing down each column's name?

Answer 1

You may check with filter

df = df.filter(regex = r'^(?!M_\d+_\d+_yr)')