Skip Rows but Keep Header when Reading CSV File in Python (Example)

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to remove certain rows when importing a CSV file in the Python programming language.

The tutorial contains this information:

Here’s how to do it!

Example Data & Software Libraries

First, we have to import the pandas library:

import pandas as pd                         # Load pandas library

The following data will be used as a basis for this Python tutorial:

data = pd.DataFrame({'x1':range(10, 16),    # Create pandas DataFrame
                     'x2':[4, 3, 8, 3, 9, 8],
                     'x3':[5, 9, 5, 3, 4, 7],
                     'x4':['a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f']})
print(data)                                 # Print pandas DataFrame

As you can see based on Table 1, the example data is a DataFrame consisting of six rows and four variables.

Next, we can write this pandas DataFrame to a CSV file using the to_csv function:

data.to_csv('data.csv', index = False)      # Export pandas DataFrame

The CSV file that got created after executing the previous Python code will be used as a basis for the following example.

Example: Skip Certain Rows when Reading CSV File as pandas DataFrame

The following Python syntax illustrates how to read a pandas DataFrame from a CSV, but ignore certain rows.

For this task, we can use the read_csv file function as shown below. Within the read_csv function, we have to assign a list of rows indices that we want to delete to the skiprows argument:

data_import = pd.read_csv('data.csv',       # Read pandas DataFrame from CSV
                          skiprows = [1, 3, 5])
print(data_import)                          # Print imported pandas DataFrame

Table 2 shows the output of the previous Python syntax: We have constructed a new pandas DataFrame containing only some of the rows in our CSV file. However, the column names of the input file have been retained.

Video & Further Resources

In case you need further info on the Python programming code of this tutorial, I recommend having a look at the following video on the Statistics Globe YouTube channel. I explain the Python code of this tutorial in the video:

The YouTube video will be added soon.

Furthermore, you may read some of the other articles on my website:

• pandas Library Tutorial in Python
• Load CSV File as pandas DataFrame
• Read Only Certain Columns of CSV File
• Read Only First Column of pandas DataFrame in CSV File
• All Python Programming Tutorials

You have learned in this article how to skip certain rows when creating a pandas DataFrame from a CSV file, but keeping the header in the Python programming language. In case you have additional comments or questions, let me know in the comments section.