Select columns using pandas dataframe.query()

After playing around with this for a while and reading through the source code for DataFrame.query, I can't figure out a way to do it.

If it's not impossible, apparently it's at least strongly discouraged. When this question came up on github, prolific Pandas dev/maintainer jreback suggested using df.eval() for selecting columns and df.query() for filtering on rows.

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UPDATE:

javadba points out that the return value of eval is not a dataframe. For example, to flesh out jreback's example a bit more...

df.eval('A')

returns a Pandas Series, but

df.eval(['A', 'B'])

does not return at DataFrame, it returns a list (of Pandas Series).

So it seems ultimately the best way to maintain flexibility to filter on rows and columns is to use iloc/loc, e.g.

df.loc[0:4, ['A', 'C']]

output

          A         C
0 -0.497163 -0.046484
1  1.331614  0.741711
2  1.046903 -2.511548
3  0.314644 -0.526187
4 -0.061883 -0.615978

Dataframe.query is more like the where clause in a SQL statement than the select part.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
np.random.seed(123)
dates = pd.date_range('1/1/2000', periods=8)
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randn(8, 4), index=dates, columns=['A', 'B', 'C', 'D'])

To select a column or columns you can use the following:

df['A'] or df.loc[:,'A']

or

df[['A','B']] or df.loc[:,['A','B']]

To use the .query method you do something like

df.query('A > B') which would return all the rows where the value in column A is greater than the value in column b.

                   A         B         C         D
2000-01-03  1.265936 -0.866740 -0.678886 -0.094709
2000-01-04  1.491390 -0.638902 -0.443982 -0.434351
2000-01-05  2.205930  2.186786  1.004054  0.386186
2000-01-08 -0.140069 -0.861755 -0.255619 -2.798589

Which is more readable in my opinion that boolean index selection with

df[df['A'] > df['B']]