python - select columns based on columns names containing a specific string in pandas

Question

I created a dataframe using the following:

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.rand(10, 3), columns=['alp1', 'alp2', 'bet1'])

I'd like to get a dataframe containing every columns from df that have alp in their names. This is only a light version of my problem, so my real dataframe will have more columns.

Answer 1

alternative methods:

In [13]: df.loc[:, df.columns.str.startswith('alp')]
Out[13]:
       alp1      alp2
0  0.357564  0.108907
1  0.341087  0.198098
2  0.416215  0.644166
3  0.814056  0.121044
4  0.382681  0.110829
5  0.130343  0.219829
6  0.110049  0.681618
7  0.949599  0.089632
8  0.047945  0.855116
9  0.561441  0.291182

In [14]: df.loc[:, df.columns.str.contains('alp')]
Out[14]:
       alp1      alp2
0  0.357564  0.108907
1  0.341087  0.198098
2  0.416215  0.644166
3  0.814056  0.121044
4  0.382681  0.110829
5  0.130343  0.219829
6  0.110049  0.681618
7  0.949599  0.089632
8  0.047945  0.855116
9  0.561441  0.291182