pandas.tools.merge.merge

pandas.tools.merge.merge(left, right, how='inner', on=None, left_on=None, right_on=None, left_index=False, right_index=False, sort=True, suffixes=('.x', '.y'), copy=True)

Merge DataFrame objects by performing a database-style join operation by columns or indexes.

If joining columns on columns, the DataFrame indexes will be ignored. Otherwise if joining indexes on indexes or indexes on a column or columns, the index will be passed on.

Parameters :

left : DataFrame

right : DataFrame

how : {‘left’, ‘right’, ‘outer’, ‘inner’}, default ‘inner’

• left: use only keys from left frame (SQL: left outer join)
• right: use only keys from right frame (SQL: right outer join)
• outer: use union of keys from both frames (SQL: full outer join)
• inner: use intersection of keys from both frames (SQL: inner join)

on : label or list

Field names to join on. Must be found in both DataFrames.

left_on : label or list, or array-like

Field names to join on in left DataFrame. Can be a vector or list of vectors of the length of the DataFrame to use a particular vector as the join key instead of columns

right_on : label or list, or array-like

Field names to join on in right DataFrame or vector/list of vectors per left_on docs

left_index : boolean, default True

Use the index from the left DataFrame as the join key(s). If it is a MultiIndex, the number of keys in the other DataFrame (either the index or a number of columns) must match the number of levels

right_index : boolean, default True

Use the index from the right DataFrame as the join key. Same caveats as left_index

sort : boolean, default True

Sort the join keys lexicographically in the result DataFrame

suffixes : 2-length sequence (tuple, list, ...)

Suffix to apply to overlapping column names in the left and right side, respectively

copy : boolean, default True

If False, do not copy data unnecessarily

Returns :

merged : DataFrame

Examples

>>> A              >>> B
    lkey value         rkey value
0   foo  1         0   foo  5
1   bar  2         1   bar  6
2   baz  3         2   qux  7
3   foo  4         3   bar  8

>>> merge(A, B, left_on='lkey', right_on='rkey', how='outer')
   lkey  value.x  rkey  value.y
0  bar   2        bar   6
1  bar   2        bar   8
2  baz   3        NaN   NaN
3  foo   1        foo   5
4  foo   4        foo   5
5  NaN   NaN      qux   7