How do I export a Pandas Data Frame as a text file?

You can use the following syntax to export a pandas DataFrame to a text file:

#specify path for export
path = r'c:data_foldermy_data.txt'

#export DataFrame to text file
with open(path, 'a') as f:
    df_string = df.to_string(header=False, index=False)
    f.write(df_string)

The argument header=False tells pandas not to include the header row in the text file and index=False tells pandas not to include the index column in the text file.

Feel free to leave out these arguments if you’d like to include the header row or the index column in the text file.

The following example shows how to use this syntax to export a pandas DataFrame to a text file in practice.

Example: Export Pandas DataFrame to Text File

Suppose we have the following pandas DataFrame that contains information about various basketball players:

import pandas as pd

#create DataFrame
df = pd.DataFrame({'team': ['A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F', 'G', 'H'],
                   'points': [18, 22, 19, 14, 14, 11, 20, 28],
                   'assists': [5, 7, 7, 9, 12, 9, 9, 4],
                   'rebounds': [11, 8, 10, 6, 6, 5, 9, 12]})

#view DataFrame
print(df)

  team  points  assists  rebounds
0    A      18        5        11
1    B      22        7         8
2    C      19        7        10
3    D      14        9         6
4    E      14       12         6
5    F      11        9         5
6    G      20        9         9
7    H      28        4        12

We can use the following syntax to export this DataFrame to a text file called basketball_data.txt:

#specify path for export
path = r'c:data_folderbasketball_data.txt'

#export DataFrame to text file
with open(path, 'a') as f:
    df_string = df.to_string(header=False, index=False)
    f.write(df_string)

If I navigate to the folder where I exported this file, I can view the text file:

The values in the text file match the values in the pandas DataFrame.

Notice that the header row and the index column have both been removed from the DataFrame, just as we specified.

If you’d like to keep the header row and index column in the text file, you can instead use the following syntax:

#specify path for export
path = r'c:data_folderbasketball_data.txt'

#export DataFrame to text file (keep header row and index column)
with open(path, 'a') as f:
    df_string = df.to_string()
    f.write(df_string)

If I navigate to the folder where I exported this file, I can view the text file:

Notice that the header row and index column are both included in the text file.

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