How to copy/paste DataFrame from Stack Overflow into Python
pd.read_clipboard()
is nifty. However, if you're writing code in a script or a notebook (and you want your code to work in the future) it's not a great fit. Here's an alternative way to copy/paste the output of a dataframe into a new dataframe object that ensures that df
will outlive the contents of your clipboard:
# py3 only, see below for py2
import pandas as pd
from io import StringIO
d = '''0 1 2 3 4
A Y N N Y
B N Y N N
C N N N N
D Y Y N Y
E N Y Y Y
F Y Y N Y
G Y N N Y'''
df = pd.read_csv(StringIO(d), sep='\s+')
A few notes:
- The triple-quoted string preserves the newlines in the output.
StringIO
wraps the output in a file-like object, whichread_csv
requires.- Setting
sep
to\s+
makes it so that each contiguous block of whitespace is treated as a single delimiter.
update
The above answer is Python 3 only. If you're stuck in Python 2, replace the import line:
from io import StringIO
with instead:
from StringIO import StringIO
If you have an old version of pandas
(v0.24
or older) there's an easy way to write a Py2/Py3 compatible version of the above code:
import pandas as pd
d = ...
df = pd.read_csv(pd.compat.StringIO(d), sep='\s+')
The newest versions of pandas
have dropped the compat
module along with Python 2 support.
If you are copy-pasting from CSV file which has standard entries like this:
2016,10,M,0600,0610,13,1020,24
2016,3,F,0300,0330,21,6312,1
2015,4,M,0800,0830,8,7112,30
2015,10,M,0800,0810,19,0125,1
2016,8,M,1500,1510,21,0910,2
2015,10,F,0800,0810,3,8413,5
df =pd.read_clipboard(sep=",", header=None)
df.rename(columns={0: "Name0", 1: "Name1",2:"Name2",3:"Name3",4:"Name4",5:"Name5",6:"Name6",7:"Name7",8:"Name8"})
will give you properly defined pandas Dataframe.
Pandas is written by people that really know what people want to do.
Since version 0.13
there's a function pd.read_clipboard
which is absurdly effective at making this "just work".
Copy and paste the part of the code in the question that starts bar foo
, (i.e. the DataFrame) and do this in a Python interpreter:
In [53]: import pandas as pd
In [54]: df = pd.read_clipboard()
In [55]: df
Out[55]:
bar foo
0 4 1
1 5 2
2 6 3
Caveats
- Don't include the iPython
In
orOut
stuff or it won't work - If you have a named index, you currently need to add
engine='python'
(see this issue on GitHub). The 'c' engine is currently broken when the index is named. - It's not brilliant at MultiIndexes:
Try this:
0 1 2
level1 level2
foo a 0.518444 0.239354 0.364764
b 0.377863 0.912586 0.760612
bar a 0.086825 0.118280 0.592211
which doesn't work at all, or this:
0 1 2
foo a 0.859630 0.399901 0.052504
b 0.231838 0.863228 0.017451
bar a 0.422231 0.307960 0.801993
Which works, but returns something totally incorrect!