how to extract columns names from dataframe in python code example

Example 1: python return column names of pandas dataframe

# Basic syntax:
your_dataframe.columns

# Note, if you want the column names as a list, just do:
list(your_dataframe.columns)

Example 2: select specific column names from dataframe

import pandas
data = pandas.DataFrame({'A' : ['X', 'Y'], 
                        'B' : 1, 
                        'C' : [2, 3]})
print data[['A', 'B']]

# Output   A  B
# 0  X  1
# 1  Y  1