Unpacking a list to select multiple columns from a spark data frame

Use df.select(cols.head, cols.tail: _*)

Let me know if it works 🙂

Explanation from @Ben:

The key is the method signature of select:

select(col: String, cols: String*)

The cols:String* entry takes a variable number of arguments. :_* unpacks arguments so that they can be handled by this argument. Very similar to unpacking in python with *args. See here and here for other examples.