Retrieving Column Headers from a Pandas DataFrame

Pandas DataFrames are versatile data structures that enable efficient data manipulation and analysis. One common task involves extracting column headers, which can be useful for obtaining an overview of the DataFrame's structure or for further processing.

Suppose you have a DataFrame imported from user input, where the number and names of columns are unknown. To extract the column headers as a list, you can leverage the following methods:

Method 1: Using DataFrame.columns.values

column_headers = list(my_dataframe.columns.values)

my_dataframe.columns returns a Index object containing the column headers. By converting this Index to a list using values, you obtain a list of strings representing the column names.

Method 2: Using DataFrame.columns

column_headers = list(my_dataframe)

This method is a shorthand notation for my_dataframe.columns.values, which directly converts the columns to a list.

Example Usage

Consider the DataFrame:

    y  gdp  cap
0   1    2    5
1   2    3    9
2   8    7    2
3   3    4    7
4   6    7    7
5   4    8    3
6   8    2    8
7   9    9   10
8   6    6    4
9  10   10    7

Using either method, you will obtain the following list of column headers:

['y', 'gdp', 'cap']