Python Pandas Replacing Header with Top Row

Question

I currently have a dataframe that looks like this:

           Unnamed: 1    Unnamed: 2   Unnamed: 3  Unnamed: 4
0   Sample Number  Group Number  Sample Name  Group Name
1             1.0           1.0          s_1         g_1
2             2.0           1.0          s_2         g_1
3             3.0           1.0          s_3         g_1
4             4.0           2.0          s_4         g_2

I'm looking for a way to delete the header row and make the first row the new header row, so the new dataframe would look like this:

    Sample Number  Group Number  Sample Name  Group Name
0             1.0           1.0          s_1         g_1
1             2.0           1.0          s_2         g_1
2             3.0           1.0          s_3         g_1
3             4.0           2.0          s_4         g_2

I've tried stuff along the lines of if 'Unnamed' in df.columns: then make the dataframe without the header df.to_csv(newformat,header=False,index=False) but I don't seem to be getting anywhere.

Answer 1

If you want a one-liner, you can do:

df.rename(columns=df.iloc[0]).drop(df.index[0])

Answer 2

--another way to do this

df.columns = df.iloc[0]
df = df.reindex(df.index.drop(0)).reset_index(drop=True)
df.columns.name = None

    Sample Number  Group Number  Sample Name  Group Name
0             1.0           1.0          s_1         g_1
1             2.0           1.0          s_2         g_1
2             3.0           1.0          s_3         g_1
3             4.0           2.0          s_4         g_2

If you like it hit up arrow. Thanks

Answer 3

new_header = df.iloc[0] #grab the first row for the header
df = df[1:] #take the data less the header row
df.columns = new_header #set the header row as the df header

Answer 4

The dataframe can be changed by just doing

df.columns = df.iloc[0]
df = df[1:]

Then

df.to_csv(path, index=False) 

Should do the trick.

Answer 5

@ostrokach answer is best. Most likely you would want to keep that throughout any references to the dataframe, thus would benefit from inplace = True.
df.rename(columns=df.iloc[0], inplace = True) df.drop([0], inplace = True)