Get column index from column name in python pandas
dataframe, indexing, pandas, python
Solution
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.
Problem
In R when you need to retrieve a column index based on the name of the column you could do ``` idx <- which(names(my_data)==my_colum_name) ``` Is there a way to do the same with pandas dataframes?