ENH: Support rename on MultiIndex (original) (raw)

Change up MultiIndex.rename to be an alias for MultiIndex.set_names.

• Index.rename : takes single object
• MultiIndex.set_names, Index.set_names - same type signature: take list of names [Index.set_names can only take iterable of length 1)
• MultiIndex.rename - synonym for set_names

So if you want to do something generically, you should use set_names (just like you would with other attributes). If you expect a non-MI index, then you could use rename with a string, etc.

cc @jreback

I personally think that this behavior is how it should work for Index. Everyone okay with this? I'd prefer not to do type sniffing if at all possible.

ind = Index(range(10)) ind.rename(["apple"], inplace=True) print(ind.name) # ['apple'] print(ind.names) # [['apple']] ind.set_names('apple') # Fails with error that it's too long