Read CSV without the first column in Python

This tutorial includes two methods to read CSV without the first column in Python.

Method 1:

pd.read_csv(“CSV_file_name”,index_col=0)

Method 2:

df=pd.read_csv(“CSV_file_name”)

del df[df.columns[0]]

Example for Method 1

The following is an example showing without and with index_col=0 in read.csv().

import pandas as pd

# read the csv file from Github, without index_col=0
df_raw=pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TidyPython/CSV_Sample/main/car_data.csv")

# print out the original dataframe
print('Raw Dataframe: \n',df_raw)

# read the csv file from Github, with index_col=0
df_removed=pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TidyPython/CSV_Sample/main/car_data.csv", index_col=0)

# print out the dataframe removed the first column
print('Removed Dataframe: \n', df_removed)

The following is the output, which includes both versions of dataframe. In the removed dataframe, we remove the first column of data. To remove the first column, we can add index_col=0 in read_csv().

Raw Dataframe: 
    Unnamed: 0  Brand Location  Year
0           0  Tesla       CA  2019
1           1   Ford       CA  2018
2           2  Tesla       NY  2020
3           3   Ford       MA  2019

Removed Dataframe: 
    Brand Location  Year
0  Tesla       CA  2019
1   Ford       CA  2018
2  Tesla       NY  2020
3   Ford       MA  2019

Example for Method 2

We can first read the CSV file using Pandas, and then we can del to remove the first column of data. 

import pandas as pd

# read the csv file from Github, without index_col=0
df=pd.read_csv("https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TidyPython/CSV_Sample/main/car_data.csv")

# print out the original dataframe
print('Raw Dataframe: \n',df)

# remove the first column of data frame
del df[df.columns[0]]

# print out the dataframe removed the first column
print('Removed Dataframe: \n', df)

The following is the output. As we can see, raw dataframe has one additional index column.

Raw Dataframe: 
    Unnamed: 0  Brand Location  Year
0           0  Tesla       CA  2019
1           1   Ford       CA  2018
2           2  Tesla       NY  2020
3           3   Ford       MA  2019

Removed Dataframe: 
    Brand Location  Year
0  Tesla       CA  2019
1   Ford       CA  2018
2  Tesla       NY  2020
3   Ford       MA  2019

Further Reading

The following shows a few other tutorials about reading CSV and Excel files in Python.