Initialize a dataframe without a header

Question

To create a pandas dataframe with a header I can do:

df = pd.DataFrame({'a':[1,2,3], 'b':[4,5,6]})

   a  b
0  1  4
1  2  5
2  3  6

How would I create one without a header, something like:

df = pd.DataFrame([[1,2,3],[4,5,6]])

   0  1  2
0  1  2  3
1  4  5  6
# seems to create three headers, '0', '1', and '2' for the index of the array.

Mmm, how do you propose to make use of this dataframe with no column names? Why not just have a 2D numpy array, which will be much faster? — roganjosh
– roganjosh, Commented Dec 17, 2018 at 19:20
I was thinking I could use the index, perhaps it's already doing that above just explicitly? — David542
– David542, Commented Dec 17, 2018 at 19:21
You just get an autoincrementing column name. Use an array and array indexing. Unless there's a specific function in pandas that you need, I think this will be both inefficient and confusing — roganjosh
– roganjosh, Commented Dec 17, 2018 at 19:22

Tarifazo · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-17 19:22:43Z

7

Use zip to interpret the lists as columns instead of lines (if that is your question):

df = pd.DataFrame([*zip([1,2,3],[4,5,6])])
df
>>    0  1
0  1  4
1  2  5
2  3  6

answered Dec 17, 2018 at 19:22

Tarifazo

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1 Comment

yes, sorry my question wasn't clear, this is the answer that I was looking for -- thanks.

yatu · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-17 19:27:06Z

2

Well what you could do, having created the dataframe, is:

df.columns = ['' for i in range(df.shape[1])]

However, this is not advisable as the columns are necessary if you want to slice the dataframe

answered Dec 17, 2018 at 19:21

yatu

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