Reorder columns in groups by number embedded in column name? - python-3.x

Question

I have a very large dataframe with 1,000 columns. The first few columns occur only once, denoting a customer. The next few columns are representative of multiple encounters with the customer, with an underscore and the number encounter. Every additional encounter adds a new column, so there is NOT a fixed number of columns -- it'll grow with time.
Sample dataframe header structure excerpt:
id dob gender pro_1 pro_10 pro_11 pro_2 ... pro_9 pre_1 pre_10 ...
I'm trying to re-order the columns based on the number after the column name, so all _1 should be together, all _2 should be together, etc, like so:
id dob gender pro_1 pre_1 que_1 fre_1 gen_1 pro2 pre_2 que_2 fre_2 ...
(Note that the re-order should order the numbers correctly; the current order treats them like strings, which orders 1, 10, 11, etc. rather than 1, 2, 3)
Is this possible to do in pandas, or should I be looking at something else? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
EDIT:
Alternatively, is it also possible to re-arrange column names based on the string part AND number part of the column names? So the output would then look similar to the original, except the numbers would be considered so that the order is more intuitive:
id dob gender pro_1 pro_2 pro_3 ... pre_1 pre_2 pre_3 ...
EDIT 2.0:
Just wanted to thank everyone for helping! While only one of the responses worked, I really appreciate the effort and learned a lot about other approaches / ways to think about this.

Answer 1

Here is one way you can try:
# column names copied from your example
example_cols = 'id dob gender pro_1 pro_10 pro_11 pro_2 pro_9 pre_1 pre_10'.split()
# sample DF
df = pd.DataFrame([range(len(example_cols))], columns=example_cols)
df
# id dob gender pro_1 pro_10 pro_11 pro_2 pro_9 pre_1 pre_10
#0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
# number of columns excluded from sorting
N = 3
# get a list of columns from the dataframe
cols = df.columns.tolist()
# split, create an tuple of (column_name, prefix, number) and sorted based on the 2nd and 3rd item of the tuple, then retrieved the first item.
# adjust "key = lambda x: x[2]" to group cols by numbers only
cols_new = cols[:N] + [ a[0] for a in sorted([ (c, p, int(n)) for c in cols[N:] for p,n in [c.split('_')]], key = lambda x: (x[1], x[2])) ]
# get the new dataframe based on the cols_new
df_new = df[cols_new]
# id dob gender pre_1 pre_10 pro_1 pro_2 pro_9 pro_10 pro_11
#0 0 1 2 8 9 3 6 7 4 5

Answer 2

Luckily there is a one liner in python that can fix this:
df = df.reindex(sorted(df.columns), axis=1)
For Example lets say you had this dataframe:
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
df = pd.DataFrame({'Name': [2, 4, 8, 0],
'ID': [2, 0, 0, 0],
'Prod3': [10, 2, 1, 8],
'Prod1': [2, 4, 8, 0],
'Prod_1': [2, 4, 8, 0],
'Pre7': [2, 0, 0, 0],
'Pre2': [10, 2, 1, 8],
'Pre_2': [10, 2, 1, 8],
'Pre_9': [10, 2, 1, 8]}
)
print(df)
Output:
Name ID Prod3 Prod1 Prod_1 Pre7 Pre2 Pre_2 Pre_9
0 2 2 10 2 2 2 10 10 10
1 4 0 2 4 4 0 2 2 2
2 8 0 1 8 8 0 1 1 1
3 0 0 8 0 0 0 8 8 8
Then used
df = df.reindex(sorted(df.columns), axis=1)
Then the dataframe will then look like:
ID Name Pre2 Pre7 Pre_2 Pre_9 Prod1 Prod3 Prod_1
0 2 2 10 2 10 10 2 10 2
1 0 4 2 0 2 2 4 2 4
2 0 8 1 0 1 1 8 1 8
3 0 0 8 0 8 8 0 8 0
As you can see, the columns without underscore will come first, followed by an ordering based on the number after the underscore. However this also sorts of the column names, so the column names that come first in the alphabet will be first.

Answer 3

You need to split you column on '_' then convert to int:
c = ['A_1','A_10','A_2','A_3','B_1','B_10','B_2','B_3']
df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(0,100,(2,8)), columns = c)
df.reindex(sorted(df.columns, key = lambda x: int(x.split('_')[1])), axis=1)
Output:
A_1 B_1 A_2 B_2 A_3 B_3 A_10 B_10
0 68 11 59 69 37 68 76 17
1 19 37 52 54 23 93 85 3
Next case, you need human sorting:
import re
def atoi(text):
return int(text) if text.isdigit() else text
def natural_keys(text):
'''
alist.sort(key=natural_keys) sorts in human order
http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200712/human_sorting.html
(See Toothy's implementation in the comments)
'''
return [ atoi(c) for c in re.split(r'(\d+)', text) ]
df.reindex(sorted(df.columns, key = lambda x:natural_keys(x)), axis=1)
Output:
A_1 A_2 A_3 A_10 B_1 B_2 B_3 B_10
0 68 59 37 76 11 69 68 17
1 19 52 23 85 37 54 93 3

Answer 4

Try this.
To re-order the columns based on the number after the column name
cols_fixed = df.columns[:3] # change index no based on your df
cols_variable = df.columns[3:] # change index no based on your df
cols_variable = sorted(cols_variable, key=lambda x : int(x.split('_')[1])) # split based on the number after '_'
cols_new = cols_fixed + cols_variable
new_df = pd.DataFrame(df[cols_new])
To re-arrange column names based on the string part AND number part of the column names
cols_fixed = df.columns[:3] # change index no based on your df
cols_variable = df.columns[3:] # change index no based on your df
cols_variable = sorted(cols_variable)
cols_new = cols_fixed + cols_variable
new_df = pd.DataFrame(df[cols_new])