Replacing Header with Top Row

The dataframe can be changed by just doing

df.columns = df.iloc[0]
df = df[1:]

Then

df.to_csv(path, index=False) 

Should do the trick.

If you want a one-liner, you can do:

df.rename(columns=df.iloc[0]).drop(df.index[0])

@ostrokach answer is best. Most likely you would want to keep that throughout any references to the dataframe, thus would benefit from inplace = True.
df.rename(columns=df.iloc[0], inplace = True)
df.drop([0], inplace = True)

–another way to do this

df.columns = df.iloc[0]
df = df.reindex(df.index.drop(0)).reset_index(drop=True)
df.columns.name = None

    Sample Number  Group Number  Sample Name  Group Name
0             1.0           1.0          s_1         g_1
1             2.0           1.0          s_2         g_1
2             3.0           1.0          s_3         g_1
3             4.0           2.0          s_4         g_2

If you like it hit up arrow. Thanks

Here’s a simple trick that defines column indices “in place”. Because set_index sets row indices in place, we can do the same thing for columns by transposing the data frame, setting the index, and transposing it back:

df = df.T.set_index(0).T

Note you may have to change the 0 in set_index(0) if your rows have a different index already.

header = table_df.iloc[0]
table_df.drop([0], axis =0, inplace=True)
table_df.reset_index(drop=True)
table_df.columns = header
table_df

The best practice and Best OneLiner:

df.to_csv(newformat,header=1)

Notice the header value:

Header refer to the Row number(s) to use as the column names. Make no mistake, the row number is not the df but from the excel file(0 is the first row, 1 is the second and so on).

This way, you will get the column name you want and won’t have to write additional codes or create new df.

Good thing is, it drops the replaced row.

Another one-liner using Python swapping:

df, df.columns = df[1:] , df.iloc[0]

This won’t reset the index

Although, the opposite won’t work as expected df.columns, df = df.iloc[0], df[1:]

Alternatively, we can do this when reading a file with pandas.

This case we can use,

pd.read_csv('file_path',skiprows=1)

When reading the file this will skip the first row and will set the column as the second row of the file.

For some reason, I had to do it this way:

df.columns = [*df.iloc[0]]
df = table[1:]

The part where I’m splitting the list into a list looks redundant, but otherwise, the headers still turn up as part of the actual table.

This seems like a task that may be needed more than once. I’ve taken rgalbo’s answer and written a simple function that can be lifted and placed into any project.

def promote_df_headers(df):
    '''
    Takes a df and uses the first row as the header

    Parameters
    ----------
    df : DataFrame
        Any df with one or more columns.

    Returns
    -------
    df : DataFrame
        Input df with the first row removed and used as the column names.

    '''

    new_header = df.iloc[0] 
    df = df[1:] 
    df.columns = new_header
    df = df.reset_index(drop=True)

    return df