v0.5.0.txt

.. _whatsnew_050:

v.0.5.0 (October 24, 2011)
--------------------------

New Features
~~~~~~~~~~~~

- :ref:`Added <basics.df_join>` ``DataFrame.align`` method with standard join options
- :ref:`Added <io.parse_dates>` ``parse_dates`` option to ``read_csv`` and ``read_table`` methods to optionally try to parse dates in the index columns
- :ref:`Added <io.parse_dates>` ``nrows``, ``chunksize``, and ``iterator`` arguments to ``read_csv`` and ``read_table``. The last two return a new ``TextParser`` class capable of lazily iterating through chunks of a flat file (:issue:`242`)
- :ref:`Added <merging.multikey_join>` ability to join on multiple columns in ``DataFrame.join`` (:issue:`214`)
- Added private ``_get_duplicates`` function to ``Index`` for identifying duplicate values more easily (ENH5c_)
- :ref:`Added <indexing.df_cols>` column attribute access to DataFrame.
- :ref:`Added <indexing.df_cols>` Python tab completion hook for DataFrame columns. (:issue:`233`, :issue:`230`)
- :ref:`Implemented <basics.describe>` ``Series.describe`` for Series containing objects (:issue:`241`)
- :ref:`Added <merging.df_inner_join>` inner join option to ``DataFrame.join`` when joining on key(s) (:issue:`248`)
- :ref:`Implemented <indexing.df_cols>` selecting DataFrame columns by passing a list to ``__getitem__`` (:issue:`253`)
- :ref:`Implemented <indexing.set_ops>` & and | to intersect / union Index objects, respectively (:issue:`261`)
- :ref:`Added<reshaping.pivot>` ``pivot_table`` convenience function to pandas namespace (:issue:`234`)
- :ref:`Implemented <basics.rename_axis>` ``Panel.rename_axis`` function (:issue:`243`)
- DataFrame will show index level names in console output (:issue:`334`)
- :ref:`Implemented <indexing.take>` ``Panel.take``
- :ref:`Added<basics.console_output>` ``set_eng_float_format`` for alternate DataFrame floating point string formatting (ENH61_)
- :ref:`Added <indexing.set_index>` convenience ``set_index`` function for creating a DataFrame index from its existing columns
- :ref:`Implemented <groupby.multiindex>` ``groupby`` hierarchical index level name  (:issue:`223`)
- :ref:`Added <io.store_in_csv>` support for different delimiters in ``DataFrame.to_csv`` (:issue:`244`)
- TODO: DOCS ABOUT TAKE METHODS

Performance Enhancements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- VBENCH Major performance improvements in file parsing functions ``read_csv`` and ``read_table``
- VBENCH Added Cython function for converting tuples to ndarray very fast. Speeds up many MultiIndex-related operations
- VBENCH Refactored merging / joining code into a tidy class and disabled unnecessary computations in the float/object case, thus getting about 10% better performance (:issue:`211`)
- VBENCH Improved speed of ``DataFrame.xs`` on mixed-type DataFrame objects by about 5x, regression from 0.3.0 (:issue:`215`)
- VBENCH With new ``DataFrame.align`` method, speeding up binary operations between differently-indexed DataFrame objects by 10-25%.
- VBENCH Significantly sped up conversion of nested dict into DataFrame (:issue:`212`)
- VBENCH Significantly speed up DataFrame ``__repr__`` and ``count`` on large mixed-type DataFrame objects

.. _ENH61: https://github.com/pydata/pandas/commit/6141961
.. _ENH5c: https://github.com/pydata/pandas/commit/5ca6ff5d822ee4ddef1ec0d87b6d83d8b4bbd3eb