In order to read a CSV file without headers use None value to header param in pandas read_csv() function. In this article, I will explain different header param values {int, list of int, None, default ‘infer’} that support how to load CSV with headers and with no headers.
1. Read CSV without Headers
By default, pandas consider CSV files with headers (it uses the first line of a CSV file as a header record), in case you wanted to read a CSV file without headers use header=None param.
When header=None used, it considers the first record as a data record.
# Read csv without header
df = pd.read_csv('/Users/admin/apps/courses.csv', header=None)
print(df)
Yields below output.
2. Set Header Names
When the header is ignored it assigned numerical numbers as column names. To fix this read_csv() function provides a param names to assign custom column names while reading.
columns = ['courses','course_fee','course_duration','course_discount']
df = pd.read_csv('/Users/admin/apps/courses.csv', header=None, names=columns)
print(df)
Yields below output.
courses course_fee course_duration course_discount
0 Spark 25000 50 Days 2000
1 Pandas 20000 35 Days 1000
2 Java 15000 NaN 800
3 Python 15000 30 Days 500
4 PHP 18000 30 Days 800
3. pandas Read CSV with Header
As I said above, by default it reads the CSV with header (Considers the first row as header). If you have wanted to consider at Nth row use header=N param (replace N according to you need).
df = pd.read_csv('/Users/admin/apps/courses.csv')
print(df)
4. Ignore Header Record
Assumes that you have a header with column names as the first row on CSV file and you wanted to ignore this while reading, to do so use skiprows=1 and assign new column names as explained above.
columns = ['courses','course_fee','course_duration','course_discount']
df = pd.read_csv('/Users/admin/apps/courses.csv', header=None,
names=columns, skiprows=1)
print(df)
By not using skiprows=1 param, it converts the header row with column names as data records.
Conclusion
In this article, you have learned how to read a pandas CSV file with and without headers, If you don’t have a header use header=None. If you have a header then use skiprows=1 and use header=None.
Happy Learning !!
