Selecting a row of pandas series/dataframe by integer index Selecting a row of pandas series/dataframe by integer index python python

Selecting a row of pandas series/dataframe by integer index


echoing @HYRY, see the new docs in 0.11

http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html

Here we have new operators, .iloc to explicity support only integer indexing, and .loc to explicity support only label indexing

e.g. imagine this scenario

In [1]: df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(5,2),index=range(0,10,2),columns=list('AB'))In [2]: dfOut[2]:           A         B0  1.068932 -0.7943072 -0.470056  1.1922114 -0.284561  0.7560296  1.037563 -0.2678208 -0.538478 -0.800654In [5]: df.iloc[[2]]Out[5]:           A         B4 -0.284561  0.756029In [6]: df.loc[[2]]Out[6]:           A         B2 -0.470056  1.192211

[] slices the rows (by label location) only


The primary purpose of the DataFrame indexing operator, [] is to select columns.

When the indexing operator is passed a string or integer, it attempts to find a column with that particular name and return it as a Series.

So, in the question above: df[2] searches for a column name matching the integer value 2. This column does not exist and a KeyError is raised.


The DataFrame indexing operator completely changes behavior to select rows when slice notation is used

Strangely, when given a slice, the DataFrame indexing operator selects rows and can do so by integer location or by index label.

df[2:3]

This will slice beginning from the row with integer location 2 up to 3, exclusive of the last element. So, just a single row. The following selects rows beginning at integer location 6 up to but not including 20 by every third row.

df[6:20:3]

You can also use slices consisting of string labels if your DataFrame index has strings in it. For more details, see this solution on .iloc vs .loc.

I almost never use this slice notation with the indexing operator as its not explicit and hardly ever used. When slicing by rows, stick with .loc/.iloc.


You can think DataFrame as a dict of Series. df[key] try to select the column index by key and returns a Series object.

However slicing inside of [] slices the rows, because it's a very common operation.

You can read the document for detail:

http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/indexing.html#basics