Python | Pandas dataframe.eval()

Python is a great language for doing data analysis, primarily because of the fantastic ecosystem of data-centric python packages. Pandas is one of those packages and makes importing and analyzing data much easier. Pandas dataframe.eval() function is used to evaluate an expression in the context of the calling dataframe instance. The expression is evaluated over the columns of the dataframe.

Syntax: DataFrame.eval(expr, inplace=False, **kwargs) Parameters: expr : The expression string to evaluate. inplace : If the expression contains an assignment, whether to perform the operation inplace and mutate the existing DataFrame. Otherwise, a new DataFrame is returned. kwargs : See the documentation for eval() for complete details on the keyword arguments accepted by query(). Returns: ret : ndarray, scalar, or pandas object

Example #1: Use eval() function to evaluate the sum of all column element in the dataframe and insert the resulting column in the dataframe. Python3

# importing pandas as pd
import pandas as pd

# Creating the dataframe 
df=pd.DataFrame({"A":[1,5,7,8],
                 "B":[5,8,4,3],
                 "C":[10,4,9,3]})

# Print the first dataframe
df

Let's evaluate the sum over all the columns and add the resultant column to the dataframe Python3 1==

# To evaluate the sum over all the columns
df.eval('D = A + B+C', inplace = True)

# Print the modified dataframe
df

Output :   Example #2: Use eval() function to evaluate the sum of any two column element in the dataframe and insert the resulting column in the dataframe. The dataframe has NaN value. Note : Any expression can not be evaluated over NaN values. So the corresponding cells will be NaN too. Python3

# importing pandas as pd
import pandas as pd

# Creating the dataframe
df=pd.DataFrame({"A":[1,2,3],
                 "B":[4,5,None],
                 "C":[7,8,9]})

# Print the dataframe
df

Let's evaluate the sum of column "B" and "C". Python3 1==

# To evaluate the sum of two columns in the dataframe
df.eval('D = B + C', inplace = True)

# Print the modified dataframe
df

Output : Notice, the resulting column 'D' has NaN value in the last row as the corresponding cell used in evaluation was a NaN cell.