Drop multiple columns from dataframe containing strings from a provided list

Question

I have columns like 'Name, Gender, Child_1, Child_2, Child_3, Child_4 .... ' . Lets say, I want to drop Child columns, then I can use this:

df.loc[:, ~df.columns.str.contains("Child")]

What if I have 'Name, Gender, Child_1, Child_2, Child_3, Child_4, Cousin_1, Cousin_2, Cousin_3 ... ' How can I drop multiple such columns at once?

Exact case is, 'How to drop multiple columns by providing a list of substrings'. My requirement is that, I have an array ['Child','Cousin'...] , that should be enough to drop columns that contains either Child or Cousin or some other element that I give, to be dropped from the dataframe.

I think I can use df.loc logic multiple times in a loop, but I think that's costly. So, I'm looking for options.

jezrael · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-02 08:38:34Z

4

Use join with | for regex or for test all value of list:

L = ['Child','Cousin'...]
df.loc[:, ~df.columns.str.contains('|'.join(L))]

edited Mar 2, 2022 at 8:38

answered Mar 2, 2022 at 8:31

jezrael

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