What’s new in 2.3.0 (June 4, 2025)

These are the changes in pandas 2.3.0. See Release notes for a full changelog including other versions of pandas.

Enhancements

Other enhancements

• The semantics for the copy keyword in __array__ methods (i.e. called when using np.array() or np.asarray() on pandas objects) has been updated to work correctly with NumPy >= 2 (GH 57739)

• Series.str.decode() result now has StringDtype when future.infer_string is True (GH 60709)

• to_hdf() and to_hdf() now round-trip with StringDtype (GH 60663)

• Improved repr of NumpyExtensionArray to account for NEP51 (GH 61085)

• The Series.str.decode() has gained the argument dtype to control the dtype of the result (GH 60940)

• The cumsum(), cummin(), and cummax() reductions are now implemented for StringDtype columns (GH 60633)

• The sum() reduction is now implemented for StringDtype columns (GH 59853)

Notable bug fixes

These are bug fixes that might have notable behavior changes.

notable_bug_fix1

In previous versions, comparing Series of different string dtypes (e.g. pd.StringDtype("pyarrow", na_value=pd.NA) against pd.StringDtype("python", na_value=np.nan)) would result in inconsistent resulting dtype or incorrectly raise. pandas will now use the hierarchy

Increased minimum version for Python

in determining the result dtype when there are different string dtypes compared. Some examples:

• When pd.StringDtype("pyarrow", na_value=pd.NA) is compared against any other string dtype, the result will always be boolean[pyarrow].

• When pd.StringDtype("python", na_value=pd.NA) is compared against pd.StringDtype("pyarrow", na_value=np.nan), the result will be boolean, the NumPy-backed nullable extension array.

• When pd.StringDtype("python", na_value=pd.NA) is compared against pd.StringDtype("python", na_value=np.nan), the result will be boolean, the NumPy-backed nullable extension array.

API changes

• When enabling the future.infer_string option, Index set operations (like union or intersection) will now ignore the dtype of an empty RangeIndex or empty Index with object dtype when determining the dtype of the resulting Index (GH 60797)

Deprecations

• Deprecated allowing non-bool values for na in str.contains(), str.startswith(), and str.endswith() for dtypes that do not already disallow these (GH 59615)

• Deprecated the "pyarrow_numpy" storage option for StringDtype (GH 60152)

• The deprecation of setting the argument include_groups to True in DataFrameGroupBy.apply() has been promoted from a DeprecationWarning to FutureWarning; only False will be allowed (GH 7155)

Bug fixes

Numeric

• Bug in Series.mode() and DataFrame.mode() with dropna=False where not all dtypes would sort in the presence of NA values (GH 60702)

• Bug in Series.round() where a TypeError would always raise with object dtype (GH 61206)

Strings

• Bug in DataFrameGroupBy.min(), DataFrameGroupBy.max(), Resampler.min(), Resampler.max() where all NA values of string dtype would return float instead of string dtype (GH 60810)

• Bug in DataFrame.sum() with axis=1, DataFrameGroupBy.sum() or SeriesGroupBy.sum() with skipna=True, and Resampler.sum() with all NA values of StringDtype resulted in 0 instead of the empty string "" (GH 60229)

• Bug in Series.__pos__() and DataFrame.__pos__() where an Exception was not raised for StringDtype with storage="pyarrow" (GH 60710)

• Bug in Series.rank() for StringDtype with storage="pyarrow" that incorrectly returned integer results with method="average" and raised an error if it would truncate results (GH 59768)

• Bug in Series.replace() with StringDtype when replacing with a non-string value was not upcasting to object dtype (GH 60282)

• Bug in Series.str.center() with StringDtype with storage="pyarrow" not matching the python behavior in corner cases with an odd number of fill characters (GH 54792)

• Bug in Series.str.replace() when n < 0 for StringDtype with storage="pyarrow" (GH 59628)

• Bug in Series.str.slice() with negative step with ArrowDtype and StringDtype with storage="pyarrow" giving incorrect results (GH 59710)

Indexing

• Bug in Index.get_indexer() round-tripping through string dtype when infer_string is enabled (GH 55834)

I/O

• Bug in DataFrame.to_excel() which stored decimals as strings instead of numbers (GH 49598)

Other

• Fixed usage of inspect when the optional dependencies pyarrow or jinja2 are not installed (GH 60196)

Contributors

A total of 24 people contributed patches to this release. People with a “+” by their names contributed a patch for the first time.

• ChiLin Chiu +

• Irv Lustig

• Isuru Fernando +

• Jake Thomas Trevallion +

• Joris Van den Bossche

• Kevin Amparado +

• LOCHAN PAUDEL +

• Lumberbot (aka Jack)

• Marc Mueller +

• Marco Edward Gorelli

• Matthew Roeschke

• Pandas Development Team

• Patrick Hoefler

• Richard Shadrach

• SALCAN +

• Sebastian Berg

• Simon Hawkins

• Thomas Li

• Will Ayd

• William Andrea

• William Ayd

• dependabot[bot]

• jbrockmendel

• tasfia8 +