Make a delete function

Question

I tried to implement a function that automatically does this:

del data['method_code']
del data['aqi']
del data['local_site_name']
del data['cbsa_name']

I have this function:

def del_data_func(data,columns):
  data[columns] =  data[columns].apply(lambda x: del(x))
  return data
del_list = data.columns[['method_code','aqi','local_site_name','cbsa_name']]
del_data_func (data, del_list)

How can i implement it in the right manner and avoid any errors like this one :

data[columns] =  data[columns].apply(lambda x: del(x))
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

CaptainMeow · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-08 00:28:28Z

3

Why not try this?

data.drop(['method_code', 'aqi', 'local_site_name', 'cbsa_name'], axis=1, inplace=True)

That list could be in fact any list as long as the elements in the list are valid column names from your dataframe.

answered Jul 8, 2017 at 0:28

CaptainMeow

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Comments

niraj · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-08 01:25:10Z

1

I don't know if lambda is requirement, otherwise one way is to loop: If df is:

   col1  col2  col3  col4  col5
0     1     1     1     1     1
1     2     2     2     2     2
2     3     3     3     3     3
3     4     4     4     4     4
4     5     5     5     5     5

Then, function can be written as:

def del_data_func(data,columns):
    for column_name in columns: del data[column_name]

Now, calling the function:

del_list = ['col2', 'col4']
del_data_func (data, del_list) 
print(data)

Output: after col2 and col4 are removed:

   col1  col3  col5
0     1     1     1
1     2     2     2
2     3     3     3
3     4     4     4
4     5     5     5

answered Jul 8, 2017 at 1:25

niraj

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