Is there a way to check if a column exists in a Pandas DataFrame Suppose that I have the following DataFrame gt gt gt import pandas as pd gt gt gt from random import randint gt gt gt df pd DataFrame A randint 1 9 for x in xrange 10 B randint 1 9 10 for x in xrange 10 C randint 1 9 100 for x in xrange 10 gt gt gt df A B C 0 3 40 100 1 6 30 200 2 7 70 800 3 3 50 200 4 7 50 400 5 4 10 400 6 3 70 500 7 8 30 200 8 3 40 800 9 6 60 200 and I want to calculate df sum df A df C But first I want to check if df A exists and if not I want to calculate df sum df B df C instead

How to check if a column exists in Pandas

This will work:

if 'A' in df:

But for clarity, I'd probably write it as:

if 'A' in df.columns:

~ Answered on 2014-07-21 16:48:49