replace rows in a pandas data frame

Question

I want to start with an empty data frame and then add to it one row each time. I can even start with a 0 data frame data=pd.DataFrame(np.zeros(shape=(10,2)),column=["a","b"]) and then replace one line each time.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

Use .loc for label based selection, it is important you understand how to slice properly: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#selection-by-label and understand why you should avoid chained assignment: http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#indexing-view-versus-copy

In [14]:

data=pd.DataFrame(np.zeros(shape=(10,2)),columns=["a","b"])
data
Out[14]:
   a  b
0  0  0
1  0  0
2  0  0
3  0  0
4  0  0
5  0  0
6  0  0
7  0  0
8  0  0
9  0  0

[10 rows x 2 columns]
In [15]:

data.loc[2:2,'a':'b']=5,6
data
Out[15]:
   a  b
0  0  0
1  0  0
2  5  6
3  0  0
4  0  0
5  0  0
6  0  0
7  0  0
8  0  0
9  0  0

[10 rows x 2 columns]