Set index name of pandas DataFrame

Question

I have a pandas dataframe like this:

    ''     count sugar      420 milk       108 vanilla    450 ... 

The first column has no header and I would like to give it the name: 'ingredient'.

I created the dataframe from a csv file:

df = pd.read_csv('./data/file_name.csv', index_col=False, encoding="ISO-8859-1")   df = df['ingredient_group']  #selecting column  df = df.value_counts()       #calculating string occurance which return series obj df = pd.DataFrame(df)        #creating dataframe from series obj 

How do I assign the name 'ingredient' to the first column which has currently no name?

I already tried:

df_count.rename(columns={'': 'ingredient'}, inplace=True)  df = pd.DataFrame(df, columns = ['ingredient','count'] 

How do I prevent this from happening?

''        count ingredient  '' sugar      420 milk       108 vanilla    450 ... 

Answer 1

if ingredients is the name of the index then you can set it by

df.index.name='ingredient' 

With the current solutions you have 'ingredient' as name of the index, which is printed in different row to that of column names. This cannot be changed as is. Try the modified solution below, here the index is copied on to a new column with column name and the index replaced with sequence of numbers.

df['ingredient']=df.index df = df.reset_index(drop=True)