How to drop a specific column of csv file while reading it using pandas?

If you know the column names prior, you can do it by setting usecols parameter

When you know which columns to use

Suppose you have csv file with columns ['id','name','last_name'] and you want just ['name','last_name']. You can do it as below:

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("sample.csv", usecols = ['name','last_name'])

when you want first N columns

If you don’t know the column names but you want first N columns from dataframe. You can do it by

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv("sample.csv", usecols = [i for i in range(n)])

Edit

When you know name of the column to be dropped

# Read column names from file
cols = list(pd.read_csv("sample_data.csv", nrows =1))
print(cols)

# Use list comprehension to remove the unwanted column in **usecol**
df= pd.read_csv("sample_data.csv", usecols =[i for i in cols if i != 'name'])