Set the headers using pandas.read_csv
pandas, python
Solution
Pandas 0.7.3 does not support index duplicates. You need at least 0.8.0, between 0.8.0 and 0.8.1 several issues with duplicates in the index are fixed, so 0.8.1 (=most recent stable release) might be best. However even 0.8.1 is not an answer to your problem, because this version has an issue with duplicate column names (you can not display a dataframe with duplicate column names).
Problem
I have a csv file that I read into a dataframe using the pandas API. I intend to set my own header instead of the default first row. (I also get rid of some of the rows.) How do I best achieve this? I tried the following but this didn't work as expected: ``` header_row=['col1','col2','col3','col4', 'col1', 'col2'] # note the header has duplicate column values df = pandas.read_csv(csv_file, skiprows=[0,1,2,3,4,5], names=header_row) ``` This gives following error - ``` File "third_party/py/pandas/io/parsers.py", line 187, in read_csv File "third_party/py/pandas/io/parsers.py", line 160, in _read File "third_party/py/pandas/io/parsers.py", line 628, in get_chunk File "third_party/py/pandas/core/frame.py", line 302, in __init__ File "third_party/py/pandas/core/frame.py", line 388, in _init_dict File "third_party/py/pandas/core/internals.py", line 1008, in form_blocks File "third_party/py/pandas/core/internals.py", line 1036, in _simple_blockify File "third_party/py/pandas/core/internals.py", line 1068, in _stack_dict IndexError: index out of bounds ``` I then tried settings the columns via ``` df.columns = header_row ``` But this error-ed out probably because of duplicate column values. ``` File "engines.pyx", line 101, in pandas._engines.DictIndexEngine.get_loc (third_party/py/pandas/src/engines.c:2498) File "engines.pyx", line 107, in pandas._engines.DictIndexEngine.get_loc (third_party/py/pandas/src/engines.c:2447) Exception: ('Index values are not unique', 'occurred at index entity') ``` I am using pandas 0.7.3 version. From the documentation - names : array-like List of column names I am sure I am missing something simple here. Thanks for any help here.