Rename dataframe inplace

[shantanuo]

Is this possible with janitor?
df.clean_names(inplace=True)

[ericmjl]

Currently not possible, it also is unclear to me why an inplace=True kwarg is needed for the pyjanitor family of functions. Every method chained function returns a dataframe, which means all we have to do is to assign the returned dataframe to a variable name.

[shantanuo]

"inplace" parameter is not really needed. But I suggested it because a lot of pandas methods use it and clean_function will look like a native pandas method with this.
Which one of these 2 statements look more pythonic?
df=df.clean_names()
df.clean_names(inplace=True)
I guess the user should have both the options available.

[ericmjl]

@shantanuo the expected use case of .clean_names() is usually after the data frame is constructed. Hence the examples:

df = (
    pd.read_csv(...)
    .clean_names()
    # chain more functions down here
)

These design of these functions is such that they should be chained, as opposed to being used on single lines.

[shantanuo]

I have never used this style, nor have I seen others chaining immediately after read_*
I am not an expert, I will like to know what does the community think about it.

[ericmjl]

No worries, good to know. Btw, if you're interested in reading more of why I decided to put pyjanitor together, and develop it with the rest of the community, here's a document I'm working on: https://github.com/ericmjl/pyjanitor/blob/whitepaper/paper/manuscript.md