subtract multiple columns at once

Question

I have two dataframes:

df_1 = pd.DataFrame({'a' : [7,8, 2], 'b': [6, 6, 11], 'c': [4, 8, 6]})
df_1

and

df_2 = pd.DataFrame({'d' : [8, 4, 12], 'e': [16, 2, 1], 'f': [9, 3, 4]})
df_2

My goal is something like:

In a way that 'in one shot' I can subtract each column multiple times.

I'm trying for loop but I´m stuck!

tdy · Accepted Answer · 2021-06-29T02:39:53.750

You can subtract them as numpy arrays (using .values) and then put the result in a dataframe:

df_3 = pd.DataFrame(df_1.values - df_2.values, columns=list('xyz'))

#     x   y  z
# 0  -1 -10 -5
# 1   4   4  5
# 2 -10  10  2

Or rename df_1.columns and df_2.columns to ['x','y','z'] and you can subtract them directly:

df_1.columns = df_2.columns = list('xyz')
df_3 = df_1 - df_2

#     x   y  z
# 0  -1 -10 -5
# 1   4   4  5
# 2 -10  10  2

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