Get column index from column name in python pandas

DSM's solution works, but if you wanted a direct equivalent to which you could do (df.columns == name).nonzero()

Sure, you can use .get_loc():

In [45]: df = DataFrame({"pear": [1,2,3], "apple": [2,3,4], "orange": [3,4,5]})

In [46]: df.columns
Out[46]: Index([apple, orange, pear], dtype=object)

In [47]: df.columns.get_loc("pear")
Out[47]: 2

although to be honest I don't often need this myself. Usually access by name does what I want it to (df["pear"], df[["apple", "orange"]], or maybe df.columns.isin(["orange", "pear"])), although I can definitely see cases where you'd want the index number.

Here is a solution through list comprehension. cols is the list of columns to get index for:

[df.columns.get_loc(c) for c in cols if c in df]