dframe is a Python implementation of indexless dataframe data structure. dframe was built to favor ease-of-use over computational speed. It's specifically aimed to be simple and unambiguous for interactive use.

dframe provides DataFrame that is more similar to R's inbuilt dataframes (without the ambiguity) than Python's pandas.

Some notable differences from pandas dataframes and R dataframes are:

1. No index/No rownames. dframe provides indexless dataframes. There is no index and no rownames. Rows can only be indexed by row numbers (int) and by logicals (coming soon). This means there is no ambiguity whether row "index" or row "number" is used. There is no .iloc or .loc; use familiar, regular indexing, for example, df[0:3, 2].

2. String column names only. Dataframes in dframe can only have have column names that are string type (str, unicode). You can never have a column named with an int such as 1.

3. No duplicate column names. Dataframes in dframe cannot have duplicate column names. This means there can only be one column named colname and df['colname'] will always return exactly one column without any ambiguity.

4. Simple stacking operations. Since there is no index, there is no ambiguity when performing simple matrix-like horizontal and vertical stacking operations. You will not have to reindex dataframes to horizontal stack them. No index cleanup required after a stacking operation. Database-style merge operations are completely separate from matrix-like stacking operations -- use whichever one suits the task at hand. No need to cast matrix-like stacking operations into database-style merge operations.

5. Almost first-class missing value support. dframe handles missing data using Python's in-built None instead of defining a new missing value type. You can have missing values in any dtype, not just in float. Marking one element of a column as missing value will not change the dtype of that column.

6. No Series vs DataFrame. There is no object like Series in pandas. In dframe, df['colname'] returns a list-like Array object. Array is sub-classed from list and behaves like a list is most ways. If you would rather have a dataframe with only one column, use df[['colname']].

dframe can be installed using pip.

pip install --upgrade dframe

dframe should be intuitive to use. Try out these commands yourself to get a feel for it. More features will be added soon. Please file feature requests/bugs as issues.

import dframe as df
x = df.DataFrame({'a': [1, 2, 3, 4], 'b': ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']})

# Try out indexing
print(x[0, 0])  # First row, first column
print(x[1])  # Second column as a list
print(x[[1]])  # Second column as a DataFrame
print(x['a'])  # First column as a list
print(x[['a']])  # First column as a DataFrame
print(x[0, :])  # First row
print(x[0:2, :])  # First two rows
print(x[[1, 3], :])  # Second and fourth rows

print(x[::-1, :])  # Reverse order of rows
print(x[::-1])  # Reverse order of columns

# Set all values in column 'a'
x['a'] = 0

# Create a new column with a missing value in it
x['c'] = [1.0, 2.3, None, 9.0]

The documentation is currently being written. It is available here.